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Chapter 5 - Conforming and Converting

from Part II - Experimental Paradigms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2020

Gordon Sammut
Affiliation:
University of Malta
Martin W. Bauer
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
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Summary

Chapter 5 focusses on the social psychology of conformity, a classical topic of social influence. The chapter starts by reviewing a number of experiments that have demonstrated the human need for affiliation and belonging. This establishes the grounds for sociality that is a necessary precondition for human existence rather than a luxury add-on. It proceeds to review Asch’s classical conformity experiments, followed by Moscovici’s demonstrations of the conditions of minority influence. The chapter ends by considering conformity from a cultural psychology view, concluding that deviance and conformity are behavioural responses expressive of social representations, that is, sociocultural locale conditions. As such they are not explained by individual rational choice. The argument is made that conformity and dissident deviance function to maintain and to challenge the current common sense.

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The Psychology of Social Influence
Modes and Modalities of Shifting Common Sense
, pp. 97 - 116
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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