Why Do We Try so Hard to Be Like Other People and Conform?

• Informational influence is when we are unsure of a correct response, and look to imitate others who we presume are better informed
• Normative Influence is when we avoid a penalty or look for a reward by behaving in a certain way or agreeing to the rules of a group.
• Identification conformity is when we behave in a certain way due to our social or professional identity.
• Compliance conformity happens when we change our behaviour externally while internally disagreeing with our peers.
• Internalization conformity is when we imitate a person because we want to be like them.

Many group experiments highlight that simple questions involving dots and lines are answered correctly when asked individually, but when asked in a group, the answer moves towards a median, as many people simply conform to the answer of other people (who may be wrong).

Many factors influence conformity in individuals, like the difficulty of a certain task, the motivation to achieve or the size of a group.

• People who have strong leadership abilities do not conform easily.
• People are more likely to conform where the response they should take is vague.
• People from the same culture are highly likely to conform to each other.