What conformity is

1. Conformity: you change what you do, say or believe so that it matches a group you belong to.
2. Where the pressure comes from: the group being there and you noticing what it does.
3. Real pressure: the group is in front of you and you can see them reacting to what you do.
4. Imagined pressure: you picture what the group would think and change your behaviour to match.
   1. You straighten your tie before walking into the form room because you already know how a crooked one looks to everyone in there.
5. The group has to matter to you: conformity is strongest when the group's view counts for something to you, such as your tutor group at school.

Majority influence

1. Majority influence: you shift towards the beliefs or behaviour of the larger group because most people around you already hold them.
2. Seeing is enough: watching what most people do shows you what counts as normal in that setting.
3. Group size feeds the pull: the more people who agree with each other in front of you, the harder it is to be the only one out of step.
4. Agreement inside the majority feeds it too: if one member of the group breaks ranks, the pull weakens, because you are no longer the only person standing out.
5. Not knowing the answer opens you up to it: when you are unsure, the majority looks like a reasonable guide to what is right.

Compliance and internalisation

1. Compliance: you go along with the majority in public while privately keeping your own view.
   1. The change lasts only while the group is watching, so it is shallow and temporary.
2. Internalisation: you take the majority position on as your own view, so it is now what you think.
   1. The change stays when you are on your own, so it is deep and lasting.
3. Both count as conformity: internalisation is the deeper of the two, because your private view moved as well as your behaviour.

Reasons people conform

1. Wanting to be accepted: standing apart from a large group risks disapproval or being frozen out, so you match it to stay liked.
   1. This route tends to produce compliance, because the behaviour goes once the audience goes.
2. Assuming the majority must be right: when a lot of people agree and you have no strong view, you treat their answer as better information than your own.
   1. This route can produce internalisation, because your private belief has changed as well.
3. The two routes often run together: you can start out copying a group to fit in and end up agreeing with it for real.

Helpful and harmful conformity

1. Helpful conformity: queueing at the bus stop, going quiet when an exam starts and taking your shoes off in someone's house are all majority influence.
2. Harmful conformity: laughing along when a group starts picking on one person works through the same group pressure.

Turning this into marks

1. When two types of conformity are asked for, make compliance and internalisation genuinely separate rather than one point rephrased.
2. Name the group whose view mattered to the person, because a description that would fit any group does not secure the knowledge mark.
3. Say whether the private belief moved as well as the public behaviour, because that is what separates internalisation from compliance.
4. The mark most often lost is describing an order from an authority figure, which is obedience, in an answer about conformity.