Social Psychology – Conformity NSI vs. ISI

Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in one’s behaviour or belief in order to fit in with the social norm. A person’s opinion could be changed by influences such as peer pressure and the physical presence of others, or as Crutchfield in 1955 suggested, “yielding to group pressures.”

Kelman (1958) distinguished between three different types of conformity: Compliance, identification and internalisation. Compliance involves an individual publicly changing their behaviour or belief to fit in with a group despite the fact that they disagree privately. This is evident in Asch’s ‘length of lines’ study in 1955. Identification involves the individual to publicly change their behaviour or belief to fit in with the group and also agreeing with them privately although if the group one day ceased to exist then agreement would only be temporary. An example would be Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment in 1973. Internalisation is where a group causes a permanent change in behaviour and beliefs and there is no change in private opinion.

Motivation to conform can stem from normative social influence (NSI). NSI is to do with having the desire to fit in with a group of people and a person often conforms due to the fear of being rejected by the group if they do or agree with something which the rest of the group are against/disagree with. NSI usually involves compliance. For instance, say there are 5 people in your group of friends including yourself. 4 of them are talking about their love for pop/punk rock music. You may actually hate the styles they love and instead prefer jazz/blues music but for the sake of fitting in and with the fear of rejection, you nod your head and agree with how amazing the drummer looks with those new neon blue highlights in his edgy fringe but you actually don’t care.

Asch’s ‘length of lines’ study in 1955 showed NSI.

Informational social influence (ISI) is another type of motivation which is to do with the desire to be correct when there is no obvious right answer. When a person lacks knowledge about something or is in an ambiguous situation, they look to the group for guidance, socially comparing their behaviour with the group. ISI usually involves internalisation. For instance, if a class discussion is happening and a student who is perceived as highly intelligent gives their opinion on the topic, other students might follow and agree with that judgement.

Jenness’ ‘bottle of beans’ experiment in 1932 showed ISI and is an example of internalisation.

In Britain, ethical guidelines for research are published by the British Psychological Society and the purpose of these codes of conduct is to protect research participants, the reputation of psychology and psychologists themselves. With regard to Asch’s experiment, participants were not protected from psychological stress and discomfort which may occur if they disagreed with the majority thus fully informed consent was not provided by participants. Asch also deceived the volunteers by leading them to believe that they were taking part in a ‘vision’ test but the real purpose was to see how the ‘naive’ participant would react to the behavior of the confederates. However, deception was necessary to produce valid results and it is important to remember that codes of conduct are not sufficient in themselves to guarantee that research is ethical. The BPS guidelines (1978) state: “The understanding of human behaviour ameliorates the human condition and enhances human dignity… The balance between the interests of the subject and the humane or scientific value of the research must be weighed carefully… A detailed list of prescribed and proscribed procedures would be impractical… The principles should not be a substitute for considered judgement.”