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Conformity is a form of social influence that involves a change in belief or behaviour in order to fit in with a group. It is sometimes called majority influence because it results from pressure — real or imagined — from the majority of a group. This lesson builds the foundational knowledge for AQA A-Level Psychology Paper 1: the three types of conformity (Kelman, 1958), the two explanations for conformity (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955), and the landmark experimental evidence supplied by Asch (1951, 1956). Mastering the link between type, explanation and evidence is what separates a descriptive answer from an analytical one in the exam.
Key Definition: Conformity is a change in a person's behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.
This lesson addresses the Social Influence section of AQA Paper 1. It covers the three types of conformity — internalisation, identification and compliance — and the two explanations for conformity: informational social influence (ISI) and normative social influence (NSI). It also covers the variables affecting conformity as investigated by Asch, namely group size, unanimity and task difficulty. You should be able to describe each type and explanation (AO1), apply them to novel scenarios (AO2), and evaluate the explanations and the supporting research, including methodological and ethical issues (AO3). Conformity is frequently examined alongside obedience, resistance to social influence and minority influence, so the concepts here recur throughout the topic.
Herbert Kelman (1958) identified three distinct levels of conformity, which differ in how deeply the change is internalised. The crucial idea is that conformity is not all-or-nothing: it varies in depth (how much the private opinion changes) and in permanence (whether the change outlasts the immediate group setting).
| Type | Definition | Depth of Change | Permanence | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compliance | Going along with the group publicly while privately disagreeing | Shallowest — behaviour changes but opinion does not | Temporary — lasts only while the group is present | Laughing at a joke you do not find funny because everyone else is laughing |
| Identification | Conforming to the opinions or behaviours of a group because you value membership of that group | Moderate — you adopt the group's views while you are a member, but may revert when you leave | Lasts while you value membership | A new employee adopting the dress code and attitudes of their workplace |
| Internalisation | Genuinely accepting the group's views because you have examined them and find them convincing | Deepest — both public behaviour and private opinion change permanently | Permanent — persists even outside the group | A person who converts to a new religion after studying its teachings and genuinely believing them |
The key examinable distinction is between public and private acceptance. In compliance there is public compliance but no private acceptance; in internalisation there is both. Identification is an intermediate case: the person genuinely accepts the group's position, but the acceptance is conditional on continued group membership, so it can be lost if the person leaves. A useful way to remember this is to ask two diagnostic questions of any scenario: Has the person's private belief changed? and Will the change survive once the group is gone? Compliance answers "no" to both; identification answers "yes, conditionally"; internalisation answers "yes, permanently".
Exam Tip: In the exam, you may be given a scenario and asked to identify which type of conformity is being demonstrated. The key distinction is whether the change is public only (compliance), tied to group membership (identification), or genuinely believed and permanent (internalisation).
It is important to connect Kelman's types of conformity to the explanations for conformity (NSI and ISI), because examiners reward answers that show the two ideas are intertwined rather than learned as separate lists:
Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard (1955) proposed two explanations for why people conform, which have become central to the AQA specification. They are called the two-process model because they identify two distinct psychological needs that drive conforming behaviour: the need to be right and the need to be liked.
Key Definition: Normative Social Influence (NSI) is conforming to the expectations of others in order to gain approval or avoid rejection. It is about the desire to be liked and accepted.
Key Definition: Informational Social Influence (ISI) is conforming because you believe others have better information or knowledge than you. It is about the desire to be right.
The two processes can be summarised as a contrast between being right (ISI, cognitive, leading to internalisation) and being liked (NSI, emotional, leading to compliance). This distinction is the analytical backbone of almost every conformity question.
Solomon Asch (1951) conducted one of the most famous studies in social psychology. His aim was to investigate whether people would conform to the obviously wrong answer of a unanimous majority on an unambiguous task — one where there was a clear correct answer. This design was deliberate: by removing ambiguity, Asch could isolate normative pressure, because there was no informational reason to doubt one's own judgement.
To examine the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform, even when the correct answer was obvious.
| Finding | Detail |
|---|---|
| Overall conformity rate | 37% of responses on critical trials were conforming (incorrect) |
| Participants conforming at least once | 75% of participants conformed on at least one critical trial |
| Never conformed | 25% of participants never conformed on any trial |
| Control group | Error rate was less than 1%, confirming the task was genuinely easy |
People will conform to a unanimous majority even when the majority is clearly wrong, primarily because of normative pressure — the desire to avoid the discomfort of standing out and being ridiculed. In post-experimental interviews, most conforming participants reported that they had continued to privately trust their own perception but went along with the group publicly to avoid disapproval — a textbook description of compliance driven by NSI. A minority, however, said they had genuinely come to doubt their own eyesight, hinting at an informational component.
Asch conducted further experiments varying the conditions to identify factors that affect conformity. These variations are examinable in their own right and provide the strongest evidence for the two-process model.
| Variation | Change Made | Result | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Group size | Varied from 1–15 confederates | Conformity rose up to 3 confederates then levelled off | A small unanimous majority is sufficient; adding more has diminishing returns — three is the "magic number" |
| Unanimity | One confederate gave the right answer | Conformity dropped to 5.5% | Having a dissenter breaks the unanimity of the majority and provides social support |
| Unanimity (different wrong answer) | One confederate gave a different wrong answer | Conformity dropped to 9% | Breaking unanimity reduces conformity even when the dissenter is also incorrect — it is the break that matters, not the correctness |
| Task difficulty | Lines made more similar in length | Conformity increased | When the task is more ambiguous, ISI increases because participants genuinely doubt their judgement |
| Private response | Participants wrote answers rather than speaking aloud | Conformity decreased significantly | NSI was reduced because the group could not observe the response |
The variations are analytically powerful: the private response result isolates NSI (removing observation removes the normative pressure), while the task difficulty result isolates ISI (introducing ambiguity creates an informational reason to conform). Together they demonstrate that both of Deutsch and Gerard's processes are operating and can be manipulated independently.
The study of conformity connects to several other areas of the specification and to wider psychology:
Asch's procedure required participants to judge the length of lines — a trivial, artificial task with no personal consequences. This matters because conformity in everyday life typically concerns decisions of genuine importance (political opinions, consumer choices, moral judgements) where the stakes and the social dynamics are quite different. Because the task bore little resemblance to real-world conformity situations, we cannot be confident the findings generalise beyond the laboratory. The implication is that Asch's 37% figure may overstate conformity (because participants had no investment in giving the right line answer) or understate it (because real conformity dilemmas carry far higher social costs). Either way, the artificiality weakens the external validity of the conclusions.
Perrin and Spencer (1980) replicated Asch's procedure with UK engineering, mathematics and chemistry students and found conformity on only one out of 396 trials. They argued that Asch's original results reflected the conformist climate of 1950s America, a decade dominated by McCarthyism, when non-conformity carried real social and political risk. This is a serious challenge because it suggests conformity is not a stable feature of human nature but is shaped by the historical and cultural context in which it is measured. The implication is that conclusions drawn from a single time and place cannot safely be treated as universal laws of behaviour — the study lacks temporal validity. A nuance worth noting for top marks is that the Perrin and Spencer sample (science and engineering students) may have been unusually confident in making objective judgements, so the comparison is not perfectly clean.
Asch's sample consisted entirely of male American undergraduates. This is both androcentric (men only) and ethnocentric (one Western, individualist culture). Cross-cultural research by Bond and Smith (1996), a meta-analysis of 133 Asch-type studies across 17 countries, found that conformity was reliably higher in collectivist cultures (which prize group harmony and interdependence) than in individualist cultures (which prize personal autonomy). This matters because it shows conformity rates are not a fixed human constant but vary systematically with cultural values — Asch's figure is therefore not directly generalisable to women, to older adults, or to non-Western populations. The implication is that any claim about "human" conformity based on Asch alone commits a beta-bias by assuming what is true of Western men is true of everyone.
Participants were deceived about the central purpose of the study and about the identity of the confederates, which means they could not give fully informed consent. They may also have experienced discomfort and embarrassment when their judgement conflicted with the group. However, this critique must be balanced: the deception was arguably necessary, since revealing the confederates' role would have destroyed the study's validity (a cost–benefit justification), and there is little evidence of lasting harm. The implication is that while the study breaches modern ethical guidelines, the breach was relatively mild and the scientific value substantial — a more defensible position than studies involving serious psychological distress.
A major strength of this body of research is that Asch's variations provide direct experimental support for Deutsch and Gerard's explanations. The private answer condition reduced conformity, supporting NSI (removing observation removes the normative motive); the ambiguous task condition increased conformity, supporting ISI (uncertainty creates an informational motive). This dovetailing of theory and evidence is a genuine strength of the topic. However, the model has limits: it implies NSI and ISI are independent processes, whereas in reality they often operate simultaneously and are hard to disentangle. The dissenter variation illustrates this — a dissenter may reduce conformity both by providing reassurance that one will not be the lone deviant (reducing NSI) and by offering an alternative source of information (altering ISI). The implication is that the two-process model is a useful analytical tool but an oversimplification of a more entangled reality.
Twenty-five per cent of Asch's participants never conformed on a single trial. The two-process model, which emphasises the situation (group pressure, ambiguity, observability), cannot fully explain why some individuals are consistently resistant. This points to a role for dispositional factors such as personality, self-esteem and locus of control. The implication is that a complete account of conformity must integrate situational and dispositional explanations rather than privileging one — the behaviour is best understood as an interaction between the person and the situation, a recurring theme across the whole social influence topic.
A strength of the two-process model is its explanatory reach into real-world behaviour, which raises its external validity beyond the laboratory. NSI helps explain why advertisers use "bandwagon" and social-proof tactics ("nine out of ten customers prefer…") — these exploit the desire to belong and to be seen aligning with the majority. ISI helps explain why people copy the behaviour of others in genuinely uncertain situations, such as evacuating a building when they see others doing so. The model has also informed practical interventions: social-norms campaigns that correct misperceptions about peer behaviour (for example, telling students that most of their peers drink less than they assume) leverage NSI to reduce harmful behaviour. This applicability matters because a theory that predicts and shapes real behaviour has demonstrated value beyond artificial line-judgement tasks. The implication is that, despite the criticisms of Asch's paradigm, the underlying explanations capture something robust about how social influence operates in everyday life.
Discuss explanations for conformity. Refer to evidence in your answer. (16 marks)
This is a 16-mark extended-response item, marked as 6 marks AO1 (knowledge of NSI and ISI — accurate, detailed description of the two explanations and how they link to types of conformity) and 10 marks AO3 (evaluation — research support, methodological and ethical critique, the situational–dispositional debate, real-world relevance). There are no AO2 application marks in this particular question; application marks appear only when the question contains a scenario/stem. The examiner is looking for a clear, organised answer in which evaluation is effective and embedded, not bolted on as a list.
Conformity is changing your behaviour because of group pressure. Deutsch and Gerard proposed two explanations. Normative social influence (NSI) is when you conform because you want to be liked and accepted by the group, so you go along with them to avoid rejection. This usually leads to compliance, where you agree in public but not in private. Informational social influence (ISI) is when you conform because you think other people know better than you, especially when a situation is ambiguous. This usually leads to internalisation, where you genuinely change your mind.
Asch's study supports NSI. He showed participants lines and put them with confederates who gave wrong answers, and 37% of responses were conforming. When participants wrote their answers down privately, conformity went down, which shows they were conforming to be liked. This supports NSI. A weakness of Asch's study is that it was artificial because judging lines is not like real life, so it might not generalise. It was also only done on American men, so it is biased. Overall, the two-process model is a useful explanation of conformity but it has some weaknesses.
Conformity is a change in behaviour or opinion resulting from real or imagined group pressure. Deutsch and Gerard's (1955) two-process model offers two explanations. Normative social influence (NSI) is driven by the need to be liked and to avoid rejection; it is an emotional process and typically produces compliance, a public change without private acceptance. Informational social influence (ISI) is driven by the need to be right and to reduce uncertainty; it is a cognitive process and typically produces internalisation, a genuine and lasting change of private belief. ISI is more likely in ambiguous or novel situations where the correct response is unclear.
Asch's (1956) variations provide strong support for both processes. When participants gave their answers privately rather than aloud, conformity fell sharply, supporting NSI: removing the group's ability to observe removed the normative pressure to fit in. When the task was made harder by using more similar lines, conformity rose, supporting ISI: increased ambiguity gave participants an informational reason to rely on others. This is a strength because the two-process model is not merely plausible but experimentally demonstrated.
However, there are limitations. Perrin and Spencer (1980) replicated Asch with British science students and found almost no conformity, suggesting the original findings were a "child of their time" reflecting 1950s American conformity, which questions the temporal validity of the explanations. The research is also culturally biased: Bond and Smith (1996) found higher conformity in collectivist than individualist cultures, so explanations derived from American men may not generalise. A further issue is that NSI and ISI are hard to separate in practice, since a dissenter may reduce conformity by reducing NSI and altering ISI simultaneously. Overall, the two-process model is well supported but somewhat oversimplified.
Conformity is a change in behaviour or private opinion resulting from real or imagined pressure from a majority. Deutsch and Gerard (1955) distinguished two underlying motives. Normative social influence (NSI) reflects the need to be liked: it is an affective process rooted in the human drive to belong, and because the change is motivated by social approval rather than conviction it typically produces compliance — public agreement without private acceptance, lasting only while the group is present. Informational social influence (ISI) reflects the need to be right: it is a cognitive process triggered by uncertainty, and because it changes what the person believes to be true it typically produces internalisation — a genuine, durable change of private opinion. The two map neatly onto Kelman's (1958) types, with identification occupying an intermediate position in which both motives operate.
The principal strength of the model is that Asch's (1956) variations operationalise and isolate each process. The private-response condition reduced conformity, demonstrating NSI: when participants could no longer be observed, the normative cost of dissent disappeared. The task-difficulty condition increased conformity, demonstrating ISI: introducing genuine ambiguity created an informational rationale for deferring to others. The elegance here is that the same paradigm manipulates the two motives independently, which is powerful evidence that both are real and distinct rather than one being a redescription of the other.
Nevertheless, several issues qualify the model. First, its temporal and cultural validity is questionable. Perrin and Spencer (1980) found conformity on just one of 396 trials with British science students, implying Asch's findings reflected the unusually conformist climate of McCarthy-era America; and Bond and Smith's (1996) meta-analysis of 17 countries found systematically higher conformity in collectivist cultures. Together these suggest the strength of normative and informational pressure is culturally and historically contingent, so the model describes a process whose magnitude is not fixed. Second, the assumption that NSI and ISI are independent is an oversimplification. In the unanimity-breaking variation, a dissenter plausibly reduces conformity both by lowering the normative cost of deviating (the participant is no longer the lone outsider) and by supplying alternative information; the two processes are therefore entangled in exactly the situations the model is used to explain. Third, the model is essentially situational and cannot account for the 25% of Asch's participants who never conformed, which implicates dispositional factors such as locus of control. The most defensible conclusion is that the two-process model is a genuinely useful analytical framework — experimentally grounded and applicable to real phenomena from advertising to bystander behaviour — but that a complete explanation of conformity requires integrating it with cultural context and individual differences, recognising behaviour as the product of an interaction between person and situation rather than situation alone.
The Mid-band answer demonstrates sound but limited knowledge: NSI and ISI are correctly described and one supporting study is offered, but the description is thin (no mention that NSI is emotional and ISI cognitive, no link to Kelman) and the evaluation is a short list of generic criticisms ("artificial", "biased") that are stated rather than developed. Crucially, it does not explain why each weakness matters, so the AO3 marks are capped. The Stronger answer is more accurate and detailed, correctly using Asch's variations to support both processes and developing two evaluation points with named studies (Perrin & Spencer; Bond & Smith). It would lose top marks because the evaluation, while developed, does not fully draw out implications or wrestle with the entanglement of NSI and ISI. The Top-band answer is distinguished not by more description but by sustained, elaborated evaluation: each AO3 point follows a point–evidence–explanation–implication structure, the temporal and cultural critiques are synthesised into a single argument about contingency, the NSI/ISI independence assumption is interrogated using the dissenter variation, and the conclusion reaches a genuine judgement about integrating situational and dispositional explanations. The discriminator across the bands is the quality of the AO3 chain of reasoning, not the volume of AO1.
Contemporary research has refined the classic picture. Studies of conformity on social media show that NSI operates powerfully online even when the "group" is anonymous and physically absent — likes, shares and visible engagement counts create normative pressure to align with apparent majority opinion, suggesting the need for social approval does not require face-to-face observation in the way Asch's private-response variation implied. Neuroscientific work using fMRI has found that conforming to a group judgement is associated with activity in reward-related brain regions, and that deviating from the group activates regions linked to error monitoring and social pain — evidence that the discomfort of non-conformity has a neural signature, lending biological plausibility to NSI. A useful debate to pursue is whether the rise of online "echo chambers" represents internalisation (people genuinely persuaded by repeated exposure to one viewpoint, via ISI) or mere compliance (people publicly signalling group membership, via NSI) — and whether the two can even be distinguished when public and private behaviour increasingly merge online. These developments show that the foundational concepts of conformity remain highly relevant to understanding twenty-first-century social behaviour.
This content is aligned with the AQA A-Level Psychology (7182) specification.