Glossary
Normative Social Influence
What is normative social influence?
Normative social influence, often shortened to normative influence, concerns conforming to expectations in order to gain acceptance or avoid disapproval. A person can comply publicly while privately disagreeing.
Research foundation
Deutsch and Gerard’s 1955 account distinguishes normative influence from using others’ judgments as information. Their study adapted Asch’s line-judgment procedure, in which people compared line lengths while hearing other group members’ answers. This setting lets researchers examine how public answers change in the presence of a group.
What changes the group situation?
In Asch’s 1955 report, participants answered aloud after others who sometimes unanimously named an incorrect matching line. Introducing a partner who gave the correct answer reduced agreement with the wrong majority. Other variations introduced a dissenter who also gave a wrong answer: breaking unanimity could matter even without supplying the correct response.
Deutsch and Gerard separately compared face-to-face and anonymous situations. Even when anonymity largely removed pressure to meet others’ expectations, participants exposed to the group’s judgments made more errors than those judging alone. A private response can reduce public-compliance pressure while leaving informational influence possible. These designs help separate explanations; they do not establish that privacy or one dissenter eliminates conformity in every setting.
Illustrative example
A meeting participant voices agreement because dissent may draw ridicule, despite remaining unconvinced. If the participant also accepts the group’s view as reliable evidence, informational influence may be present too.
Limits
Observed agreement does not reveal its motive by itself. Researchers need evidence that distinguishes social expectations from beliefs about accuracy. The concept should not be equated with groupthink or used to assume that every group norm harms independent judgment.
Normative vs. informational social influence
Normative influence concerns acceptance and disapproval; informational social influence concerns treating others’ judgments as evidence about what is correct. Conformity describes agreement or alignment, while these concepts concern reasons for it.