Definitions
Conformity
The act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms or politics.
Normative Social Influence (NSI)
Influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval from others.
Informational Social Influence (ISI)
Influence resulting from one's willingness to accept others' opinions about reality.
The evaluation of explanations of conformity involves understanding how social and informational influences contribute to conformity behavior. There are two primary explanations of conformity: Normative Social Influence (NSI) and Informational Social Influence (ISI). Each explanation contributes to a better understanding of why people conform to group norms.
Support for Normative Social Influence (NSI)
Private Answer Variation: NSI is supported by the 'private answer' variation, in which a participant arrives late, gives their answer on paper, and the group does not hear their answers. In this scenario, conformity reduces to 12.5% compared to 37% in the baseline condition.
(i) Why does this support NSI as an explanation of conformity? In the private answer condition, participants are exposed to informational influence (ISI) but not normative influence (NSI), as there is no fear of embarrassment from the group. This supports NSI since conformity drops significantly when normative aspects are removed.
(ii) How does it show that NSI is roughly twice as important as ISI? When NSI is removed, there is a 12.5% drop in conformity, consistent with the effect of ISI alone. Since conformity was 37% in the baseline condition, we can infer that 24.5% is attributable to NSI, highlighting its dominance, being roughly twice that of ISI.
Support for Informational Social Influence (ISI)
Task Difficulty: ISI is supported by the task difficulty variation. When tasks were made more challenging by making lines more similar (or easier by making lines different), conformity increased on harder tasks and decreased on easier tasks, independent of normative influence.
This shows that informational influence can affect conformity as people are more likely to conform in difficult tasks due to self-doubt, while normative influence remains stable.
Additional Support for ISI: Lucas In Lucas' variation of Asch's study using math questions with variable difficulty, participants conformed more with harder questions and less with easier ones, providing further support for ISI as a partial explanation for conformity.
Insights from Baseline Condition
The baseline condition in Asch's study showcases that conformity occurs but does not specify why—it could be due to either NSI or ISI. However, given the task's simplicity, it is more plausible that conformity is driven by normative influence, as evidenced by the low error rate in control conditions.
Comparisons: Lack of Explanatory Power
Both NSI and ISI explain conformity but not individual differences. Such differences arise from personal traits like confidence. For instance, Lucas’ experiment noted differences in conformity based on the confidence of participants in math skills.
Perrin & Spencer found almost no conformity among engineering students, possibly due to their high confidence in judgment. Notably, of the personality factors from the Big 5/OCEAN model, 'openness to experience' had a negative correlation with conformity.
In future discussions about resistance to social influence, 'locus of control' (LoC) could emerge as an explanation for individual differences, supplementing NSI and ISI.
To remember :
In summary, both Normative Social Influence (NSI) and Informational Social Influence (ISI) are crucial in understanding conformity. NSI, driven by the desire for social acceptance, significantly reduces when norms are not visible, highlighting its strength over ISI. Conversely, ISI comes into play under conditions of uncertainty, with conformity influenced by task difficulty. While these theories explain general trends, they do not account for individual differences, which can be further explored through personality traits and factors like locus of control. Understanding these diverse influences assists in a comprehensive appreciation of conformity behaviors.