Similarities And Differences Between Conformity And Obedience

Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and

Conformity and obedience are both social behaviors that are influenced by those around us and determines our behavior in social situations. When we change our attitude or behavior based on those around us, we are conforming to their behavior. When we obey what we are told, by what we perceive to be an authority figure, we are being obedient. Conformity and obedience can have positive or negative results on our lives, depending on the situation and the individuals involved.

Obedience and Conformity Both obedience and conformity involve social pressure in obedience the pressure comes from behaving as you are instructed to do; whereas in conformity the pressure comes from group norms Behaviour in obedience is determined by social power, whereas in conformity it is influenced mostly by the need for acceptance. In nearly all societies, certain people are given power and authority over others. Our society, for example, parents, teachers, and managers are invested with various degrees of authority. Most of the time, this does not cause any problems.

Conformity refers to an individual’s behavior that is performed because of group pressure, even though that pressure might not involve a direct request. Many people want to think that they are conformist enough so that they are not looked upon as strange to others and nonconformist enough to demonstrate that they are capable of thinking by themselves. For many years, psychologists have been interested in human conformity. Usually when people are in groups, they behave according to how those in the group behave. That indicates that conformity can affect a person’s behavior and make a person do things that may be against their ethics, attitudes, and morals. The study of

Human beings are defined as ''social animals'' because in every aspects of life they live together, they form a variety of groups and improve relationships with each other. Interaction with others is a natural result of living in society. In the process of interaction, society and its rules has a social impact on each individual. If people face with any kind of social impact such as group pressure, great part of them show conformity by changing their behaviors, ideas, decisions in expected way. A person conforms if he or she chooses a course of action that a majority favors or that is socially acceptable. Some kind of conformity is natural and socially healthy but obeying all the norms, ideas, and decisions without thinking or accepting

Today our society raises us to believe that obedience is good and disobedience is bad. We are taught that we should all do what we’re told and that the people that are disobedient are almost always bad people. Society tells us this, but it is not true. Most people will even be obedient to the point of causing harm to others, because to be disobedient requires the courage to be alone against authority. In Stanley Milgram’s "Perils of Obedience" experiment, his studies showed that sixty percent of ordinary people would agree to obey an authority figure even to the point of severely hurting another human being. (Milgram 347).

The acts of conforming and obeying shape us significantly, whether we are conscious of it or not. They do so in ways that psychologists Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram attempt to explain through their research. Asch touches base on the topic of conformity and discusses the ways in which group behaviors and social norms can influence the decisions an individual makes. On the other hand, Milgram’s focus is on obedience, and he studied it by measuring average, everyday people and their willingness to obey authority figures, even if it involves actions that go against their personal beliefs and morals. They have provided evidence through experiments, and with this information, it becomes easier to understand the world of politics, and how these

This experiment found that when a group of two other people refused to obey the conditions of the experiment, then the third person would most likely do the same.  It was found that, “The presence of others who are seen to disobey the authority figure reduces the level of obedience to 10%” (McLeod 588). A similar finding is noted in Solomon Asch’s “Opinions and Social Pressure”, where it was found that when someone is among their peers, they are more likely to conform to the group opinion. Asch acknowledges that social pressure plays a large role because the individual “must declare his judgments in public, before a majority which has also stated its position publicly” (Asch 599). This confirms the idea that an individual is more likely to conform when they are being judged by their

There is a fundamental human need to belong to social groups especially if people were to live and work together, it is likely that they need to agree on common beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviours in order to get along and fit-in. Thus, we learnt to conform to rules of other people, the more people see others behaving in a particular way or making particular decisions, the more likely people will feel obliged to follow the suit. This is called conformity and can be defined in different ways, Aronson, Wilson & Akert (2014) stated it is the changing of one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. According to Deutsch and Gerard (1955), social influence should be distinguished into two types, the informational social influence and normative social influence. The occurrence of social influence has implied to many real life events, which has drawn many researchers to attention. This has lead many researchers to design distinct experiments to try and understand the cause of the conformity, whether conformity is situation dependent, and whether we are able to resist social influences.

In today's day and age contemporary society's are built upon the thought of citizen conformity to a prescribed set of values and norms to. This idea of complies to social standards makes one think as to how these norms of fact society as a whole and an individual. The main driving component which draws people too conformity are the desire to be excepted in certain status groups. People fear that if they do not conformity is norms that they will be breaking the social contract therefore been shunned by society at not being able to achieve their personal goals. Further analysis of these forces for conformity in contemporary society it will be shown that these forces produced negative ethical conduct and

People have been changing their behavior or obeying someone else’s commands for years. This continues today in our everyday lives. Conformity and obedience seem similar but differ in several ways. Conformity is defined by psychologists as a change in behavior or belief to accord with others. Similar to this, is obedience. Obedience is defined acting in accordance with a direct order or command. Normally people conform to reap a reward or to avoid punishment. If we comply with a direct order or command it is considered obedience. Most of the time when people comply, it is to be accepted among others so they are not seen as outsiders. On the other hand, when we obey, we are obeying a command an authority figure

The following essay will be about understanding what is meant by and distinguishing the differences between the terms conformity and obedience. It will show the evaluation of two key psychological studies which seek to explain why people do and do not conform, also with explanations of minority influence. Whilst seeking to understand the reasons why people obey authority, it will show an evaluation of Milgram’s study of obedience, discussing the ethical issues raised from the research and

The three basic type of social pressure are conformity, compliance and obedience. “Conformity is a change in behavior or attitudes brought by a desire to follow the beliefs or standards of other people” (Feldman 496). Studies have shown that normal and well behaved people can be convinced to alter their behaviors in an undesirable manner in the bid to conform to the group’s ideology and ways. When an individual responds to a direct social pressure, it is termed compliance. Social/peer groups use compliance techniques to subtly lead people toward agreement with a request. Another form of induction used by social groups is obedience. With fear of being rejected, the involved individual tends to obey the rules and commands of the group just to meet the expectations.

Compliance plays a major role in building and maintaining relationships where children learn to behave in a certain manner to maintain status quo (Cialdini and Trost, 1998). When we comply with an instruction, we receive praises, or lavished with social acceptance and gifts. By doing so, the children feel accepted, wanted and loved by other peers. In a way, compliance acts as a form of conditioning the behavior expected from their peers (Cialdini and Trost, 1998).

Based on all the previously referred material, conformity is totally driven by social norms, norms that are not written but sometimes are more powerful than law; the way that a person conforms to society affects the level and type of his compliance to society’s requests. For example, if a person has as personal characteristic not to like altering his self-image/ presentation based on society’s preferences due to his intense belief in independence, it is possible that this person will comply more difficult because of external motivation instead of internal. On the other hand, this means that if a person has an internal compliance only to smile to people who knows and not to