Conformity is acting in terms of the accepted behaviour of a social group or a change in the behaviour of the minority to fit the behaviour of the majority. For example Jennes' study showed that when asked to estimate the number of beans in a bottle people would come up with different results, he then asked them to come up with a group estimate, then a second individual estimate. The second individual estimate was a lot closer to the group estimate than the first.

Obedience is submission to another's authority. For example Reverend Jim Jones took 911 people from San Francisco to found his cult, "The peoples temple" in Jonestown, a town he had them build in Guyana, South America. After a time he told them all to drink a mixture of Cool-aid (a grape flavoured soft drink) and cyanide, as well as various other drugs. Most obeyed him, and those who didn't told of parents first giving the drink to their children, before themselves.

Describe one research study that has explored conformity.

Asch (1951) wanted to discover if people looking to others for guidance when they were unsure solely caused conformity. To discove

Informative social difference is distinctly different to normative, as it is all about the need to be right. This is often displayed by schoolchildren, who will often look to their friends if they cannot answer a question. The views gained by this form of conformity will often be taken upon a person as their own views; Kelman also defines this as "internalisation". Another example of this is if a person is told that some of their friends are sending money to a child in the third world to aid with his or her education. They will then view this as a socially acceptable thing to do, and they may even send money themselves.

People constantly feel the need to be right; this need is reliant on their own self-confidence and self-perception

First he did this experiment with a control group of people, where all pressure was removed. 35/37 participants were correct, one made a single mistake, whilst another made two.

Milgrams participants were also deceived a number of times, as well as the advert. They drew lots for the roles of 'teacher' and 'learner', these were fixed, as the participant always became the teacher, and the learner was a confederate, this also was unknown to the participants. They were told that the confederate had a heart problem, which was untrue. They were given a shock of 45 volts, the third shock to be given, and told the learner would be given shocks increasing by 15 volts each question, this was a lie. During the test there was a tape of the conf

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