The Social Influence Of Minority And Minority Influence

One subtle form of social influence is conformity. Conformity is a change in one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. The aftermath of conforming ranges from heroism to tragedy. If we are uncertain about how to think or what do, we may rely on informational social influence. Informational social influence is the influence of other people that leads us to conform because we see them as a source of information to guide our behavior. We conform because we believe that others’ interpretations of an ambiguous situation is more correct than ours and will help us choose an appropriate course of action. Private acceptance is conforming to other people’s behavior out of a genuine belief that what they are doing or

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.

In social psychology, social influence is a process where someone’s beliefs, thoughts and behaviour change by being exposed to beliefs, thoughts and opinions of others. It manifests in several forms, such as obedience, compliance and conformity. All these types of social influence have been studied by numerous researchers who investigated the reasons why people conform to social norms and obey to authorities, such as Milgram’s classic studies on obedience. His experiments support the popular idea of ‘banality of evil’ –Hannah Arendt (1963)’s famous phrase referring to the capability to accomplish dreadful things out of banal reasons–, revealing that people conform submissively and thoughtlessly to the orders that authorities deliver, no

An individual’s need to conform stems from our mental psychology, which is something we cannot usually change because it is in our nature. Guandong Song et al described conformity as “…a subject’s behavior or attitudes following those of the object. The subject is the individual who conforms. The object can be external or internal factors that cause conforming actions, in the form of individuals, groups, organizations,

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

Social organizations pressure one another to conform to decisions made. How? Group conformity shows that individuals often seek agreement with the rest of its members. Concern towards what others think, members tend to comply with arrangements favored by the rest of the crowd. Conditions such as leadership, positions, and circumstances make us believe we need to yield to what society implies is right.

Conformity is changing your behavior or beliefs in order to be correspondent with other satisfying the need to belong (Gilovich et al, 2012). According to psychologists, the need to belong is being part of a group, which leads to many benefits such as security, connections to potential mating partners, and resources (Gilovich et al, 2012). Conformity can be determined by two mechanisms: informational social influence and normative social influence. Psychologist, Sherif, demonstrated the influence of normative social influence in conformity using an Autokinetic effect where participants in this study were asked to estimate how much a stationary point in a dark room has moved. Results from the study showed that there was deviations in answers between the answers gave while participants were separated from everyone else contrasted with the answers they gave while in a gathering (Gilovich et al, 2012). Participants reported that reason for their adjustment in answers was because they were uncertain where the dot was actually moving and therefore they looked at their surroundings for the correct answer. (Gilovich et al, 2012). In order to properly understand how informational social influence is involved in the protest in Baltimore, it is important to take the some of the events in South Africa into

In the early years of the United States, dominant-minority relations were shaped by the agrarian technology and the economic need to control land and labor. The agrarian era ended in the 1800s, and the U.S. has gone through two major transformations in subsistence technology since, each of which has transformed dominant-minority relations and required the creation of new structures and processes to maintain racial stratification and white privilege (Healey, p. 131). The early 1800s to the mid-1900s was the industrial revolution, where machines replaced animal and human labor. Today’s society is known as the postindustrial or deindustrialized society which

According to Aronson (1985), conformity is “a change in a person’s opinion or behaviour as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or a group of people”.

Why do we conform? Two basic sources of influence: normative social influence, the need to be liked, accepted by others and Informational influence: need to be correct and to behave in accordance with reality.

People don't always conform for the same reason's, in 1958 Kelman identified three main forms of conformity, each of which could produce conforming behaviour but in different ways. The first of these and the most superficial is Compliance: Going along with the majority in order to avoid rejection or in order to gain rewards such as social acceptance or approval. The distinguishing feature of compliance

“12 Angry Men” is a movie about a group of jurors whose job is to decide the guilt or innocence of an accused murder. A teenage boy is accused of killing his father, there are two eyewitnesses who claims that they have both seen and heard the murder. In the beginning of the movie, eleven of the twelve jurors vote guilty. Throughout the movie we witness a discussion where juror number 8 is able to sway the other jurors to change their mind and decide to vote not-guilty. This movie exemplifies many social psychology theories such as groupthink and conformity.

The experiment conducted by students in a social psychology class, used the same method that Milgram used to show how people conform to a group. The study found similar results to Milgram’s study, although it was conducted on a smaller campus with less people. Being that the outcome of the experiment was similar to the results of most other studies on conformity, it reinforced the idea that a group easily influences people. Based on the results of the previous studies mentioned above, it was hypothesized that more students and faculty passing by a crowd would conform when the crowd was

Solomon Asch was a psychologist that conduced numerous expirments designed to illustrate the increasing conformity within social groups. The experiments also invesigated the effect the number of people present within the group had one the conformity rate. Asch hypothesized, “ that the majority of the people would not conform to something obviosly wrong; however, when surrounded by (other) individuals all voicing an incorrect answer, 75% of them(the participant) will conform to the groups answer” (Watzlawick 1976)

Normative influence primarily occurs in situations where an individual, when amidst others in a crowd, tend to go along with them primarily in order to be liked and accepted by them as part of their fraternity. Research has identified that normative inference normally occurs as an inborn human nature as human beings tends to associate themselves with others in order to maintain a good social contact and relationship with them. Ideally, normative influence is normally furthered by the need for an individual to increase their chances of surviving especially during adverse conditions. This entails that people may at times seem to agree with others just in order for them to appease themselves to them and avoid potential conflict of standing alone and standing out. In some situations normative influence may occur where individuals associate with complete strangers. In such cases, due to mutual fear for each other, an individual may naturally try to agree with the rest in order to avoid appearing as contradictory or controversial.