Conformity Essay -- essays research papers

According to Leon Mann, conformity means accedeing to assembly pressures. Everyone is a member of one assembly oranother and everyone expects members of these groups to playact in certain ways. If you are a member of anidentifiable group you are expected to be make upadmitly to it. If you dont actualize and behaveappropriately you are akinly to be rejected by the group.Like stereotypes, conforming and expecting others toconform maintains cognitive balance.There are some(prenominal) kinds of conformity. Many studies ofconformity took place in the 1950s which led Kelman to agnise between compliance, internalisation andidentification. Compliance is the type of conformity wherethe subject goes along with the group view, but privatelydisagrees with it. Internalisation is where the subject comesto accept, and eventually believes in the group view.Identification is where the subject accepts and believes thegroup view, because he or she wants to manufacture associatedwith the group.Le on Mann identifies normative conformity which occurswhen direct group pressure forces the individual to yieldunder the threat of rejection or the promise of reward. Thiscan occur exactly if someone wants to be a member of thegroup or the groups attitudes or behaviour are important tothe individual in some way. away from normative conformity there is informationalconformity which occurs where the situation is vague orambiguous and because the person is uncertain he or sheturns to others for evidence of the appropriate response.Thirdly, Mann identifies ingratiational conformity whichoccurs where a person tries to do whatever he or shethinks the others will approve in tack together to gain acceptance(if you retrace yourself appear to be similar to someone else,they might come to like you).The setoff major research into conformity was conducted in1935 by Sherif who use a visual illusion, known as theauto-kinetic effect. Sherif told his subjects that a spot of escaped which they wer e about to see in a darkened room was qualifying to move, and he wanted them to say the directionand distance of the dejection. In the first experimentalcondition the subjects were tested individually. Some saidthe distance of movement wasnt very far in any directio,others said it was some(prenominal) inches. Sherif recorded eachsubjects response. In the second experimental condition,Sherif gathered his subject... ... and Willis separate some criticisms of the earlyresearch into conformity. Firstly the studies do not makethe motive or type of conformity. Do the subjects conformin order to gain social approval? Are they simplycomplying? Do they unfeignedly believe that their response iscorrect? Secondly Hollander and Willis claim that theexperiments do not identify whether the subjects arecomplying because they judge that its not worth coming into courtto be different, or because the actually start to believe thatthe groups judgement is correct. Hollander and Willis as wellcla im that the studies cannot show whether those who donot conform do so because they are independant thinkersor because they are anti-conformists. And Lastly, theyclaim that the studies seem to assume that independancehas to be good and conformity has to be bad. Howeverconformity is often benificial.Sherif and Asch have each conducted fairly artificiallaboritory experiments which showed that about 30% ofresponses can be explained by the need or desire of thesubjects to conform. These experiments may not accuratelyreflect real life when conformity might be benificial andsometimes contribute to psychological well-being.