Essay Hint: Students must focus directly on why people conform. This means they should explain the two main explanations for conformity - normative social influence and informational social influence.

Normative social influence occurs when a person conforms in order to fit in with a group. They do this because they want to be accepted and avoid social rejection, such as being seen as different. Normative social influence is usually linked to compliance because the person changes their public behaviour without necessarily changing their private beliefs. As a result, the change is often temporary and only lasts while the person is in the presence of the group.

Informational social influence occurs when a person conforms because they want to be right. This usually happens when they believe that someone else has more knowledge or expertise, especially in unfamiliar, ambiguous or new situations. Informational social influence is often linked to internalisation because it can lead to a change in both public behaviour and private beliefs. This long-term change is important because it shows that the person has accepted the new belief as correct and incorporated it into their own belief system.

There is laboratory research support for both normative and informational social influence. For example, Jenness asked participants to estimate the number of beans in a jar individually before discussing their answers in groups. When given a second opportunity to estimate individually, most participants changed their original answers so that they were closer to the group estimate. This suggests that participants conformed because they believed the group's judgement was more likely to be correct than their own. Therefore, Jenness's findings provide support for informational social influence as an explanation for conformity, particularly in situations where people are uncertain or lack knowledge.

There is also research support for normative social influence. In Asch's study, participants gave incorrect answers on a simple line-judgement task because they were influenced by a larger group of confederates. Post-experiment interviews suggested that many participants conformed to fit in with the group and avoid social rejection, rather than because they believed the group was correct. This supports the idea of normative social influence, as participants appeared to change their public behaviour without changing their private beliefs. However, it could be argued that Asch's study lacks temporal validity. The research was conducted in 1950s America, a time when social conformity may have been higher than it is today. As a result, the findings may not fully reflect behaviour in more individualistic modern societies.

That being said, support for normative social influence also comes from real-world research. Schultz et al. (2008) studied hotel guests to see whether perceived group behaviour would influence environmentally friendly actions, such as towel reuse. Guests who were told that 75% of other guests reused their towels were 25% less likely to request fresh towels each day than those in the control condition. This suggests that people do conform to perceived social norms in everyday situations. Therefore, this research supports normative social influence as an explanation for conformity beyond the laboratory.

However, a limitation of explanations for conformity is that they do not fully account for individual differences. For example, Perrin and Spencer (1980) replicated Asch's study using engineering, mathematics and chemistry students, and found only one instance of conformity in 396 trials. This suggests that these participants were more confident in their ability to judge line lengths and were less affected by group pressure. Therefore, this research suggests that factors such as confidence, knowledge and expertise can reduce conformity, meaning that conformity cannot always be explained by normative social influence or informational social influence alone.