Conformity is the act of changing your behaviors in order to fit in or go along with the people around you. In some cases, this social influence might involve agreeing with or acting like the majority of people in a specific group, or it might involve behaving in a particular way to be perceived as “normal”.
Why We Conform
Researchers have found that people conform for a number of different reasons
- Informational influence: when people change their behavior in order to be correct
- Normative influence: desire to avoid punishments and gain rewards
- Look to others who are better informed and more knowledgeable and use their lead as a guide for our own behaviors
Informational Conformity
In this case, conformity is looking to the group for information and direction
Influential Factors
The difficulty of the task
- Not knowing how to perform a difficult task makes people more likely to conform, but increased difficulty can also make people more accepting of different responses, leading to less conformity
- Individual differences: Personal characteristics, such as motivation to achieve and strong leadership abilities, are linked with a decreased tendency to conform
- Group size
- Situation
- Cultural differences
- People from collectivist cultures are more inclined to conform
Potential Pitfalls of Conformity
Feeling like you have to change your appearance or personality to be a member of a group might lower your self-esteem
- Succumbing to peer pressure could lead to risky or illegal behavior, such as underage drinking
- Conforming might lead to a bystander effect, in which going along with the group means failing to act when someone is in need
Asch’s Conformity Experiments
In this series of famous experiments, conducted in the 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch asked participants to complete what they believed was a simple perceptual task.
- When asked individually, participants would choose the correct line. When asked in the presence of confederates who were in on the experiment and who intentionally selected the wrong line, around 75% of participants conformed to the group at least once.
History
Conformity is something that happens regularly in our social worlds. Sometimes we are aware of our behavior, but in many cases, it happens without much thought or awareness on our parts.
Stanford Prison Experiment
In 1971, Philip Zimbardo simulated a prison setting to see how people’s behavior would change according to the role they were given (prisoner or prison guard).
- The experiment showed that behavior was affected by the expectations of the role.
- There are many criticisms of this experiment and its results.
Compliance
Changing one’s behavior while still internally disagreeing with the group
Jenness’ 1932 Experiment
In one of the earliest experiments on conformity, Jenness asked participants to estimate the number of beans in a bottle.
Sherif’s Autokinetic Effect Experiments
In a series of experiments, Muzafer Sherif asked participants to estimate how far a dot of light in a dark room moved. When asked individually, the participants’ answers varied considerably.
- When asked as part of a group, however, Sherif found that the responses converged toward a central mean.
- Sherif’s results demonstrated that in an ambiguous situation, people will conform to the group, an example of informational influence.
