Social Conformity Research

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.

Conformity is a type of social influence which involves a change in behaviour and belief of a minority to fit in with the group concerning real or imagined group pressures. This behaviour could be defined as the pressure to behave in ways that are viewed as acceptable by a particular group, brought about either by a desire to ‘fit in’ or be liked. The main factor that influences conformity are social norms. Social Norms are a pattern of expected behaviour in certain situations either implicitly or explicitly. Conformity exists in two categories, normative influence where the individual’s desire is to gain social approval and acceptance from the group to make a favourable impression. And informational social influence where a person is looking for guidance in an ambiguous situation as the individual listens to other member 's views and opinions to be guided to an answer. Conformity is distinguished in three different types; Compliance is the most superficial type of conformity. It refers to a person who conforms publicly with the views and attitudes expressed by the group but still continue to privately disagree. This temporary short term behavioural change which often results normative social influence. For example, It is a student 's first day of college, but has arrived late and missed the induction to which he doesn 't know where to go. He then sees a group of students filing off towards a corridor and

Compliance is a type of social influence that that involves a direct request from one person to another. Giving a reason with a request will often increase the compliance rate of an individual. If a request is given but without any form of explanation or reasoning behind the request then the compliance rate decreases. Authority figures also

Social Conformity is the influence of other people that leads us to follow what they do in order to be liked and accepted by them. Many people in present time think they have to do something in other to prove others that they are cool to hang out with and they could be friends. People tend to change their beliefs or what they think is right to do just to fit in a group of people.

Conformity is the social process by which people in a group or in a social circle engage in behaviour which appears to be socially acceptable, that is they go along with the social expectations apparent at the time. One of the key factors in conformity, however, is yielding to group pressure, as defined by Mann (1969):

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.

Conformity is going along with one’s belief or actions, in a group a person can be influenced to become harmful and destructive. There are certain times where peaceful protesters can turn completely angry and enraged, due to partial members misunderstanding’s towards their change in views. Stanley Milgram and Solomon Asch both did major experiments exploring the true definition of individuals who will conform to the pressure of a group or a perceived authority. Stanley Milgram and Solomon Asch experiment also showed us how perfectly normal human being can be pressed into very unusual behavior by authority figures or the consensus of opinion around them.

Conforming to a group or a person is a form of social influence. A video written by Kathleen Yale called ¨Crash Course: Psychology ´Episode 38: Social Influence´¨ explains what conformity is by saying, ¨conformity describes how we adjust our behavior or thinking to follow the behavior or rules of the group we belong to.¨ An experiment was given to five volunteers to show if they would pick the same wrong answer as the group they are in just to fit in. The results read, ¨In the end most subjects still gave what they knew was the correct answer, but more than a third were essentially willing to give the wrong answer to mesh with the group¨ (Yale, Kathleen). Research has also shown that people conform for multiple reasons. Kathleen Yale gives

Everyone has the disease. Everyone is infected. No one can help you. Conformity. It’s in your blood. Conformity means you change yourself to please another, change the way you speak because everyone else is doing it--- even questioning yourself about what to do next since you feel the need to have people’s opinions. Unfortunately, there is no way to escape from this disease. Everyone should get out of their shell every once in awhile, but that still won’t help you.

Conformity is a social influence in where we tend to change our beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes to align them with group norms. (Conformity & Obedience, n.d) In 1932, Jenness was the first psychologist to study the psychological force of conformity, and his experiment was based on group conformity and how a majority decision can influence an individual’s rational thought. (S, McLeod. 2007) The psychological force of conformity is powerful, whether it is obvious social pressure or subconscious influence. Conformity can be a good or bad influence depending on the situation, and though conformity can affect all ages, it is mostly seen in adolescence. Everybody has experienced conformity at one point in their life,

In 1951, Solomon Asch, a gestalt psychologist conducted an experiment regarding conformity. In this experiment, Asch tested how an individual can be influenced by a group of people and their views. Even though the test wasn’t extremely crucial. The purpose was to measure how likely individuals in this society are to conform to the majority. Throughout the experiment, Asch saw how an individual responded based on the answers of the group. With this, he was able to demonstrate how likely we are to conform when there is group pressure.

The causes of conformity among individuals have long been debated and researched in recent decades. It is for this reason that conformity is an intriguing psychological concept. It causes sound-minded individuals to go against their best judgement, to engage in behaviour which they usually would not engage in, even accept and welcome an idea they internally disagree with, all in order to not be a deviant from the group. It is thus interesting to look at the factors which cause people to conform, to do what they see others doing, to rely on the judgements of the group, and to ignore their own senses and perceptions. It is the reasons for the individual's desire to conform that I will be discussing in this paper.

Conformity occurs when individuals alter attitudes, actions or opinions as a result of group pressure/influence. Compliance is when people agree with what they are asked to, but their feelings, attitudes, opinions or thoughts on the matter, haven’t really altered. Finally, obedience refers following orders coming from a person of authority, even if people disagree with them. Examples of everyday life.

Social Conformity Hypothesis: Participants will act in a certain way/ change their opinion in order to conform to the majority. Social conformity refers to an individual’s change in behaviour, beliefs or feelings to accommodate to the standards of their peers or to conform to social norms. A study carried out in 1932 by Jenness to test social conformity, consisted of 101 psychology students and was an experimental investigation. Students were asked individually how many jellybeans were in a glass bottle. The participants were divided into groups and asked to find a group estimate through discussion.

Following a study known as the Asch Line Study, it was easy to see that a person will yield to group pressure to fit in with their peers. The Asch Line Study aimed to see if social pressure from a majority group could make a person conform. During the test, the subject was brought into a small room with what they believed was seven other participants. The experimenter would then tell them that they are there for a study on visual judgment as they lay two cards before them. On the left was a card containing one vertical line and on the right was a card containing three lines of varying length. One at a time the participants would say which of the three lines on the right card matches the left card, and this was repeated several times with different cards. 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.