Theories Of Conformity

Imagine a thirteen year old middle school girl, wearing Guess boots and an Abercrombie hood in order to fit in. Visualize a thirty five year old man listening to the top forty radio stations and watching American Idol, so he can have something to add to the discussion with his co-workers over coffee break. The various types of behaviours stated before are pertained to as conformity. Conformity refers to the process by which an individual's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours are influenced by other individuals. Except, how do these necessities manipulate a being? Social psychologists have conducted an assortment of experiments and concluded that, through a range of forms of social influence, groups can alter their members’ personality.

In 1932, Jenness became the first psychologist to study conformity, which involved an experiment with basic materials and little ethical treatment (Jenness). The participants were asked to examine a jar of beans. They were then told to make an estimate of how many beans were inside of the jar. The participants were not informed of intentions of the study, thus full consent was invalid. When they were exposed to the estimates of other participants before making an individual guess, most participants’ estimations differed from the norm, and a shift occurred from the first estimates to the cluster of numbers within the pool of peer responses. This result led Jenness to form the idea of informational conformity,

In pyschology conformity can be descibed as an indiviual’s tendency to follow the unspoken rules or behaviours of the social group to which he/she belongs to or wants to be apart of. Many psychologists including , Jenness (1932), Sherif (1935) both experimented in psychology, investigating conformity and group pressure. However, perhaps the most famous conformity experiment was done by Solomon Asch (1951) and his line judgment experiment. (McLeod 2007)

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

Groups can influence people’s perception and ideas even if they contradict their own. Groups can act as an entity of authority, and for some people it is difficult to stand out or think differently than their peers. “When we’re in a

When developing a group the norms of the group can ultimately determine the therapeutic outcome for the group (Yalom, 2005). Norms are formed by the leader’s behavior and the group’s expectations (Yalom, 2005). The norms are the standard social behavior for the group. This would include acceptable behavior and typical conduct of the group members.

The contents of this assignment will include multiple psychological theories to explain what ways an individual’s behaviour changes when he/she is part of a group. These theories will define social influence, conformity procedures within groups and social cognition, including the self-categorisation theory. Social groups are used in everyday living to represent beliefs, to work, play and to socialise. Groups can have a negative effect on an individual. Not been part of a group due to exclusion or stereotyping can create a negative effect.

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.

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

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

“Social influence is the process by which the actions of an individual or group affect the behavior of others” (Feldman 495). These influences are strongly experienced by members in the group. Every group is unique and is mostly guided by a particular norm and behavior. An individual in a group passively or actively allows himself to be influenced by the group just to have a sense of belongingness. In the bid to prevent being excluded or rejected from a group, some individuals overtly adhere to the norms of the group. “Thus, people conform to meet the expectations of the group” (Feldman 495).

As readers, we see how the analysis of conflictive themes has been taking over literature scenarios. When reading between the lines of certain books we can perceive themes such as conformity and rebellion. Mostly these themes can be seen in writings from times of social upheaval. According to The Oxford Dictionary, the word conformity means “behavior in accordance with socially accepted conventions or standards”, while rebellion means “the action or process of resisting authority, control, or convention.” These terms create a constant battle among societies. A certain amount of conformity needs to exist in life in order to avoid disorder. This is the reason society has laws, rules and expectations. Literature represents life, and these themes can be found at the root of many literary works. Conformity can also be considered as silence. This silence is based on the restrictions of real feelings and thoughts in some literary pieces. During the sixteenth century, the emphasis on conformity was at its height. Works of literature from this time period have often reflected a fascination and frustration with this particular characteristic. People do not want to be restricted in terms of expressing opinions and developing certain activities. When facing oppression, denial of their freedom, they rebel, and that contributes to the part of the process of change in society. Not all kinds of rebellions are rationally fundamental, but when they are, it can transform society for the

Throughout history, many have tried to break away from society's norms in an attempt to live life more fully, one example would be Rosa Parks when she stood up for her rights and didn't move to the back of the bus like society has shaped the laws back then. As a result of this incident, Parks ended up getting arrested and sent to court for not following the law. In contrast, some may choose to follow the rules of others thinking that’s their best decision. An example of this figure would be Boxer from the book Animal Farm, when he adopted his first motto “ I will work harder” (Orwell 18) after the first harvest following the Rebellion. Boxer never knew about the advantage Napoleon was taking on towards him,

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.

Group size is important because as Asch (1955) found, the larger the group, the bigger the phenomenon of conformity due to social norms. Group cohesiveness makes the group to have greater bonds due to similarity and ability to easily show empathy to each other (Christensen et al., 2004) and social support is noticed to groups with higher levels of cohesiveness and bonding. On the other hand, there are personal factors affecting the type of conformity such as self-awareness (ability to understand own self), self-presentation (try to present ideal self in order to conform), personal control (desire to feel that one has control, as a human right, over particular situations) and gender (gender differences- women are more likely to conform) (Franzoi, 2009).