collaboration.
Psychologist Herbert Kelman identified and labeled three major types of conformity. The first, compliance,
occurs when a person conforms publicly but privately keeps his or her own original beliefs. People comply
because of a need for approval from others and a fear of rejection. The second, identification, is conforming to
a particular person whom one respects, such as a friend or family member. Identification is usually motivated
by the role model's perceived attractiveness or success. The third type of conformity, internalization, is when a
person has actually absorbed a group's belief system and sees it as truly their own, both publicly and privately.
This is the most profound type of conformity and is likely to stay with people for a long time.
The strong force of conformity is well documented in psychological research. In 1936, a researcher named
Muzafer Sherif hypothesized that people would change their opinions about something in order to conform to
a larger group even if they were among strangers. To test this hypothesis, he designed an experiment which