Group Conformity: Why Do People Conform?

According to Webster Dictionary, conformity is defined as, “in compliance of rules, laws, or standards.” Mark Twain’s, “Cone-pone Opinions,” demonstrates how society reacts to new conformities; individuals eventually conform to popular ideas and inevitably abandon these ideas for something greater. Twain states, “It is our nature to conform; it is force which not many can successfully resist.” (Twain 2). The reason people conform is not for self-approval, but rather, for the approval of others.

In 1951, Solomon Asch carried out several experiments on conformity. The aim of these studies was to investigate conformity in a group environment situation. The purpose of these experiments was to see if an individual would be swayed by public pressure to go along with the incorrect answer. Asch believed that conformity reflects on relatively rational process in which people are pressured to change their behaviour. Asch designed experiments to measure the pressure of a group situation upon an individual judgment. Asch wanted to prove that conformity can really play a big role in disbelieving our own senses.

The confederates were told ahead of time what their responses would be. The line judgment test had a standard line and three other lines. Out of the three lines, one line was the same length as the standard line, one was shorter and one was longer. The object was to see if the subject would agree with the other individuals. The wrong answer was given by the confederates to see if the subject would conform or stand alone. Out of eighteen trials, twelve of which being “critical trials”, approximately 75% of the subjects conformed at least once and 25% of the subjects never conformed. He found that subjects conformed with the wrong answers of the majority but did not actually agree with their answers. Therefore, individuals conform as a result of reasons such as wanting to fit in with the majority or because they of the assumption that the group has better information as compared to them.

Less than two days into the experiment, one of the prisoners began to experience rage, emotional disturbance, uncontrollable crying, began acting crazy, and screaming. The experiment leaders realized he was really suffering and they had to release him. The next day was visiting day for the parents and friends of the prisoners. In order to stop parents from taking their children home, the experimenters cleaned the prison and the prisoners to make them seem pleasant. After the parents visited, there were rumors going around that the prisoners were going to attempt to escape. After the rumor was proved to be untrue, guards acted harshly towards the prisoners and added punishments. A priest who visited the prison, talked with prisoners and offered to contact some of their families for legal help. By day five, there were three types of guards; tough but fair guards, good guards, and hostile guards.

Conformity is a concept that has been heavily researched in the field of social psychology. Conformity is defined as a change in behavior, beliefs, and attitudes due to group pressure perceived as real (encompassing the presence of others) or imagined (encompassing the pressure of social standards) (Myers, 2010, p. 192). The concept of conformity is a powerful influence on the tendency for people to arrange their thoughts, perspectives, and ideas with others, especially when in a group. This takes away from a person’s individuality because they want to feel accepted by others and therefore, a person will accomplish this basic need of approval through conforming.

Second, society teaches us to conform by not thinking for ourselves. We are simply told how to solve a problem or accomplish a task. We are never taught why

Conformity is a form of social influence, when we conform we act and think like members of our group. Often people even alter or change their personal beliefs to match those around them. When we conform we feel pressured to fit in with others, to be a part of the majority. While we may still have contradicting beliefs towards things, we change our behaviors and actions to match what everybody else is

In Solomon E. Asch’s social pressure experiment, subjects were shown a line on a piece of paper and instructed to choose a line of the same length on a different piece of paper with two other lines of varying lengths. All but one of the subjects in each experiment group were instructed to choose the wrong answer on purpose, unbeknownst to the last member. The last member of the group, who did not know

We conform because we want to fit in and feel accepted. Unfortunately, by conforming, we allow others to shape our personalities, behavior and thoughts, taking away our ability to be ourselves. The principle of Emerson’s quote is true: joining a society does indeed take away our liberties and individualism. It is up to us to try to live up to Emerson’s statement of ideal behavior, ““It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of

Although this experiment suffers from multiple ethical dilemmas I think Zimbardo tried to design and achieve a safe study. The main ethical problem in this study is that the prisoners suffered mental and possible physical damage including fear, anger, and stress. One prisoner was even removed from the experiment after thirty-six hours because of uncontrollable screaming, crying, and anger tirades. In addition, three other individuals were removed after it appeared they had experienced emotional damage that could be long-lasting. All of the emotions experienced by the prisoners were discussed in class as elements making a study unethical. However, it is important to note that Zimbardo attempted to prevent these types of results by having participants psychologically examined prior to the experiment being conducted. This was discussed in class as a justification of harm. This process is called screening; it removes possible candidates

“I don’t believe we were put here with all of our differences to conform to a uniform state of mind” ~Sonya Teclat. Conformity is when people change to act the same as other people in their society. The government, media, and social groups are a big part of the society. These things encourage people to conform. One of the books that have people conforming is Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson. In Among the Hidden Jen, one of the characters is very outgoing and brave. Luke another character is very shy, once he meets Jen he conforms to be brave like her. In addition, society encourages conformity through government, media, and social groups.

To understand why we have a sense of conformity, we must first understand value. “Values are used to learn people’s culture, ideas, and what they want out of life (Henslin 49). Every culture has similar and different values. “Norms are the expectations a group develops concerning the ‘right’ way to reflects its values” (Henslin49). An example of a norm would be personal space and speaking quietly in certain places such as a library. When norms are violated people often begin to question the person’s sanity and well-being based on how extreme the norm violation was.

And how within just a few days some of the participants assigned as prisoners believed that they were actual prisoners and could not leave the experiment. It is also frightening how even the guards that were considered “good guards” did nothing to intervene against the more sadistic guards. Zimbardo even makes a comment toward the end of the documentary about how people believe that good will always

Taking each of these experiments into mind, my research group, consisting of Brian Muriithi, Cade Curran, Champlin Janz, Eric Altilanochir, and myself, decided to conduct the same study in 1951 with our own Asch Line experiment. The purpose of our experiment was similar to the one of Asch’s in 1951: to examine the extent of the effect social pressure from the majority of a group has on a person. For this experiment, we drew a series of three different lines on different sheets of poster paper. Two lines were similar, while one was radically different from the rest. For each trial, we would place two confederates, which are stooges that have prior knowledge of the experiment to help us collect data, in a room with a single participant. The

Unanimously the “participants” would all choose what was obviously the wrong answer to see if the actual participant would feel pressured into knowingly choosing the wrong line. Consequently, the overall data from 12 critical trials they found that on average 32% of the participants conformed to the majority with the clearly wrong answers (McLeod “Asch”). While the candidate would privately admit to disagreeing with the views of the group, they will still conform during the trials out of fear of rejection from their peers.