The Major Forms Of Conformity

Salomon E. Asch in his essay “Opinions and Social Pressure” conducted an experiment to determine effects of group pressure towards an individual and concluded that there is a very strong tendency to conformity even when doing so conflicting with their own senses of morality. In the experiment a group of young students have to compare length of lines on two different sheets of paper. On one of them there is a sample single line and on the other one there are three lines only one of which is same size as the sample line from the first sheet. People taking part in this experiment are instructed to point at lines that are the same length. At first, during the experiment the group is

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.

Influence is something that most human beings have been affected by. The way one’s parents behave might affect how the child behaves. Social influence is the thought of acceptance, and the human behavior of how one follows everything that others do just to be accepted, and most times the effect of rejection can be harmful.

Social conformity is a dangerous, chaotic force. A simple gathering can spontaneously lead to surges of violence and atrocities. As one stone is thrown, another follows, each one faster than the last. They have muddied their identity into a mob. Social conformity is the suppression of one’s thoughts and identity to conform to the herd.

Solomon Asch proved that when a group of individual subjects were asked an apparent question, the subjects would not answer incorrectly. However, in a situation where the subjects are placed with a group of people, all of whom answered incorrectly, the individual subjects would follow along and answer incorrectly. A single subject was placed with a group of people. The group of people are aware of the experiment and give scripted responses. When given a visual task, the group responded with an answer that was very obviously incorrect. When the subject was given an opportunity to answer, the subject was able to provide the same answer that the group did, or provide the answer that was correct. In these experiments, Asch found out that 32% of

Humans make all sorts of implications, different types directed to variant people. However, in this case three sources go in depth and analysis how conformity can create boundaries or barriers between you and society. Today, the influences of social pressure on rejection or acceptance can drastically modify someones perception or behavior. Moreover, we tend to oblige to norm. With limitations and boundaries authoritatively mandating us to differentiate right from wrong or whether to look left or right, it is almost to easy to blend along side of others. It seems like society's standards control our future actions. It is almost impossible to sustain a pristine thought.

They found that seventy-five percent of participants conformed when questioned. The original experiment was managed for college students at Swarthmore College, while this experiment was conducted on students from the grades 3rd, 7th, and 12th. Inspirations for the experiment was found from the Asch Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Although the Stanford Experiment is incredibly interesting to research about, the way the examination was done was unethically.

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, 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 Primary 7 's first day of school, a pupil has arrived late and missed the induction to which he doesn 't know where to go. He then sees a group of pupilss filing off towards a corridor and

There are three major categories of social influence: conformity, compliance, and obedience. Conformity is the change of behavior to be able to fit in and gain approval from other people. Compliance, on the other hand, is when a person changes their behavior in response to being asked directly. While obedience is a response to an authority figure directing an individual (Kenrick, Neuberg, & Cialdini, 2010, p. 183). These social influences affect not just individuals, but society as a whole, and one of the real world influences that will be highlighted in this paper is the issue of bullying. All three of these factors that make up social influence intertwine and work together in a way where it has a direct impact on an individual, it is beneficial to society and our own lives, but it can also be destructive in the long run.

The behavioral pattern of conformity affected each of us at one time. It’s the unspoken rules of a group, and the most critical time is being a teenager. They have a willingness to please, and want to be a part of the popular group. Their behavior may not be appropriate by society standard, but because they want to fit in or belong, they may see it as the social norm. In any phases of life, a person’s own opinion may be an influence by those of groups. Especially if they are associated with university's scholars, baseball teams or any organization deals with social groups. In Dr. Solomon, Asch’s conformity experiments he used psychological terms, which conformity refers to a person’s predisposition. Meaning they would follow the unspoken

The experiment consisted of a line judgement test, a naïve participant, and several confederates who had determined what their answers would be beforehand. To have a valid result of conformity, the naïve participant was made to believe that the confederates were real people just like them. Lines consisting of A, B, and C were presented to both the confederates and the naïve participant. Once presented with the three lines, they had to verbally state out loud which of the three lines were the same length in comparison to the target line. The experiment was purposely designed so that the naïve participant sat at the end of the table, thus allowing him to be the last one to give an answer. The results showed that out of the eighteen trials that were conducted, twelve of them consisted of the confederates purposely lying about which line they thought was the same length as the standard line (Asch,

Conformity has been the topic of many researches throughout history in Psychology. However, famous psychologist Solomon Asch discovered that these experiments never gave a precise answer to what they were looking for. In 1951, Asch devised what is now regarded as a classic experiment in social psychology. One test subject sat at a table with several others whom he thought were also test subjects, but they were actually a part of the experiment. When asked if 3 lines drawn on a piece of paper were of varying length, the experimenter asks all of them, one at a time, to choose which of the three lines on the right card matches the length of the line on the left card. When the people a part of the experiment chose the wrong line intentionally, it proved that the test subject would indeed conform to the majority's decision, which is proof of conformity.

"Conformity is a social influence that involves the act of changing your beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in order to fit in with the majority of the group"(Mcleod 1). Conformity is something that everybody has taken part in even when they weren't necessarily aware of it's presence. There are many reasons that can lead a person to conform: the need to feel wanted, the desire to feel accepted, some even conform to avoid standing out, whatever the reason everybody does it. I chose this topic specifically because it happens every day and everybody has conformed at least once in their life, myself included.

The discussion of norms and the rules a society sets brings to question those actions that are considered to be outliers. The subject of nonconformity is more than a mere steer-away from society, but rather a full deviation from the expectations and actions people are typically used to seeing around them. Members of a society can deviate from cultural norms in two different situations. Most might think that when one commits a crime, they are exemplifying the meaning of deviance. Violating formal laws are those deviant behaviors considered to be a crime. We are placed into situations that enable our actions. Sometimes we rely on human nature to establish the decisions we make. We come across an example of moral relativism in a situational context. A story was told about a plane crash that led the survivors to eat the flesh of those who died after they realized they would be stranded for a while. A contrasting story is told about an individual, Jeffery Dahmer, who would lure people into his apartment and would kill them to cook and consume their flesh. The context and the situation that people are in changes the view of whether or not something is considered deviance. In both situations, the flesh of humans was being eaten, but only one situation is seen as something that was necessary for survival. Anderson and Taylor (2013), mention that the nature of deviance does not only derive from the personality of a person and the action they commit but also factors in a significant amount of the social structure they belong to.

This experiment was conducted essentially by showing individual’s two pictures; one with three different sized lines, and another with one line that matched one of the lines in the other picture. Asch had individuals pick which line the lone one matched; A, B. or C. What Asch was doing was looking to see whether or not people would go with their own judgment and choose the correct line or if they would begin to doubt themselves, cave in, and go along with the group. His experiment is now considered a classic experiment and is by far one of the most well known social psychology experiments. The fact that all of the participants in the experiment had been told to select the same, wrong choice except one participant gave him fairly reliable results in demonstrating how conformity works. He found that 32% of the participants went along with the majority, despite what they thought to be right (Mann,