Three Types Of Conformity

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Conformity includes changing one’s behavior to fit in with what the people around them are doing. This is because if the majority is picking one answer, you will start to believe that is the correct answer even if there is no correct answer. Pressures from the people around you can allow you to make choice or actions to conform to your surroundings, even when you know it was wrong. There are three types of conformity: compliance, identification and internalization. Compliance conformity is acting from social pressure while internally disagreeing. This is usually rooted from wanting to fit in and believing there is a right answer. Identification conformity is adopting behavior that puts us in a relationship with someone we are trying to identify …show more content…

Asch became famous in the 1950’s for his conformity experiments that studied the correlation between social pressure and conformity. He strongly believed that people would give into social pressure and conform to the rest of the group even if the answer was wrong. From Asch’s experiments, he found that people were willing to give an incorrect answer to conform to the rest of the group (Cherry, 2016). Because of Asch’s experiments, for six years he was the director and most distinguished professor of psychology where he taught at Rutgers University in the Institute for Cognitive Studies. “The human mind is an organ for the discovery of truths rather than of falsehoods.” – Solomon …show more content…

If these questions were asked in a group setting, people would answer the most popular answer to seem similar to the rest or not have to answer such a difficult question. Using the example from above, let’s say 68% said the pick one son to die, the likelihood of the other 32% answering the same is high. This is most likely because they do not want to be different from the rest and in this case, be known for killing two sons instead of one. This is an example of compliance conformity. “Compliance Conformity is publicly acting in accord with social pressure while privately disagreeing” (Meyers,

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