Theseresults raise the possibility that conformity may not play asdominant a role in resolving self-group discrepancies as mostpsychological equilibrium models have posited.
I wonder if the strategies people use to resolve self-group discrepancies vary depending on the context for example the group/people they are with (being around other perceived deviants, being with friends vs peers, etc.). So that conformity vs alienation responses may depend on the specific context.
Thus, students may be disposed to accept as authentic the pub-lic pronorm behaviors of their peers, despite recognizing thattheir own public pronorm behaviors are inauthentic
reminds me of the fundamental attribution error in which you assume people's behavior indicates their true dispositions and attitudes while failing to take into consideration contextual factors however when judging yourself you will take into account the context that may lead to your behavior.
tudentswho strongly supported campus norms may have expressedtheir attitudes more vociferously than those who only weaklysupported them or who disapproved of them.
This reminds me of the familiarity effect in which people often infer the popularity of an opinion or norm by the familiarity they have with the opinion itself. This can lead to bias or erroneous view because people often forget the source of familiarity (sometimes only a couple people repeating the opinion multiple times making it unrepresentative)
To theextent that public statements accurately reflect the private atti-tudes and judgments of their proponents, the subjective normthat they instantiate will coincide with the actual norm of thegroup. To the extent that they misrepresent people's privateviews, the subjective norm will diverge from the actual norm.
Basically a subjective norm reflects the actual norm if public statements and/or actions reflect private beliefs. If there is a discrepancy between public statement and private belief, then the subjective norm does not reflect the actual norm.