Introduction

• Conformity: widespread tendency to act and think like the people around us

Conformity

• Humans may possess an inherent tendency to imitate the actions of others

• We often mimic the gestures, body postures, language, talking speed, and many other behaviors of the people we interact with

• Mimicking increases the connection between people and allows our interactions to flow more smoothly

• 2 Primary Reasons for Conformity

  • Normative Influence

    • People go along with the crowd because they are concerned about what others think of them

    • More conformity is found in collectivist countries such as Japan and China than in individualistic countries such as USA

      • Compared with individualistic cultures, people who live in collectivist cultures place a higher value on the goals of the group than on individual preferences

      • More motivated to maintain harmony in their interpersonal relations

  • Informational Influence

    • We sometimes go along with the crowd is that people are often a source of information

    • Descriptive Norms

      • Not clear what society expects of us

      • We act the way most people like us to act

• We sometimes rely on a flawed notion of the norm when deciding how we should behave

Obedience

• Interested in how people react when given an order or command from someone in a position of authority

• Good Thing:

  • Obey parents, teachers, and police officers

  • Important to follow instructions from judges, firefighters, and lifeguards

  • Military would fail function if soldiers stopped obeyed orders from superiors

• Dark Side

  • People can violate ethical principles and break laws

  • Often is at the heart of the worst of human behavior – massacres, atrocities, and even genocide

Conformity

• A change in behavior or belief as the result of real or imagined group pressure

  • You just have to think that the pressure exists

• Collectivistic (POSITIVE): tolerance, self-control

• Individualistic (NEGATIVE): submission or compliance

Types of Conformity

• Compliance: conforming without believing in what we are doing

  • Reward or punishment

• Obedience: acting in accord with a direct order or command

• Acceptance: uniformity that involves acting and believing in accord with social pressure

Suggestibility

• Muzafer Sherif studied norm formation

  • Autokinetic Phenomenon: the suggestion that something would happen is all a person needed to see it happen

    • Conformity breeds acceptance

• Mass hysteria

Group Pressure

• Solomon Asch

  • 75% conformed at least once

  • 37% conformed every time

• No obvious pressure to conform

Authority vs Conscience

• Stanley Milgram

  • Survey of predictions

  • Self-serving bias

    • 65% shocked all the way

    • 63% shocked with heart condition known

Factors of Obedience

• Victim’s distance

• Closeness and legitimacy of authority

• Institutional authority

• Group influence as liberation

Value of Experiments

• Strength of social pressure

• Compliance over moral sense

• Sensitization to moral conflict

• Confirm link between behavior and attitude

• demonstrate power of the situation

Predicting Conformity

• Group size: 3-5 ideal

• Unanimity

• Cohesion: how close you are to the group

• Status: social class, racial group, political group

• Public Response

• Prior Commitment

Social Influence

• Normative Influence: conformity based on our desire to gain acceptance and meet expectations

• Informational Influence: conformity based on evidence about reality provided by others

Conformer Personality

• Internal factors can’t predict specifics, but can predict average behavior

• When social influences are weak, personality is more predictive

• Temporary moods

Conformer Roles

• Performance conformity

• Conformity breeds acceptance

• Role reversal can change conformity

Is Resistance Futile?

• Reactance -> choice

• Asserting uniqueness