BY MAYA WARD
Introduction
The dictionary definition of conformity is as follows: the process whereby people change their beliefs, attitudes, actions, or perceptions to more closely match those held by groups to which they belong or want to belong or by groups whose approval they desire. Conformity is a field in sociology that continues to be researched extensively, and it ties in with many other ideas, such as gaslighting and individuality.
Causes of conformity
Muzafer Sherif, a Turkish psychologist, conducted an investigation with a group of 3 people in 1935. They were subjected to the autokinetic effect in different rooms, an illusion where a stationary point of bright light in a dark room appears to move, though in different directions and at different speeds for different people, despite the same light being shown. The participants then witnessed the same spectacle again, but this time they were in the same room, and when asked about how they saw the light, their responses were far more similar to each other than they had been when asked individually. This is an example of normative influence, one of the two primary causes of conformity, where people follow others behavioural patterns to maintain similarity with the crowd, so they don’t stand out and become the target of criticisms. Common examples of this in everyday life include fashion sense and hobbies – if one followed the fashion sense of their friends, they are less likely to get mocked and more likely to get complimented, resulting in increased morale. Another experiment showing the effect of normative influence is one conducted by Soloman Asch in 1956 to a group of college students. The results are especially insightful, due to the tendency of humans to conform with societal norms in their youth, and therefore a clearer and more significant result was obtained than that from Sherif’s experiment. Each participant would be given two cards, a left card with a single line on it, and a right card with three lines of unequal length on it, labelled A, B and C. The participant would then state which line on the right card matched the length of the line on the left, a seemingly very simple test. However, each participant did this in a room with a group of others, who would sometimes deliberately say the wrong answer. For the first three rounds, the others said the correct answer to gain the participant’s trust, but after this they began to deviate from the truth. The effect of normative influence meant the participant would often agree with the rest of the group, despite the answer being incorrect. This experiment displays how the normative effect not only influences subjective matters, such as deciding which hairstyle looks best on you, but also objective, black and white, right or wrong questions.
The second reason for conformity is what psychologists call informational influence. This is when we’re motivated to follow the crowd for the sake of gaining new descriptive norms, our perception of what most people do in a given situation, to help us better conform with society in the future. When its not clear what society generally expects us to do in a situation, we rely on these descriptive norms. Although this can be useful, sometimes we can wrongly perceive information presented to us, meaning the descriptive norms we follow as a result of this information are not accurate reflections of societal behaviour. A common example of this, specifically in the USA, is at parties, where underage drinking is often taking place. If the majority is consuming alcohol, you might see it as normal to do so for people your age, whereas in reality this could be vastly different, as you might not have considered all the people your age to have not attended the party in the first place. This shows an overestimate of the descriptive norm. Studies show that in America, most college students think they drink less than the average for their age because of this effect, which can have dangerous repercussions as students drink more and more in their efforts to conform with society, which in turn causes a ripple effect when other students see the increased amount of alcohol you are consuming, encouraging them to follow.
Types of conformity
There are two categories of conformity, public agreement (compliance) and private agreement (acceptance). Compliance is the external expression of conformity based on an underlying belief. If person A were to believe in socialism, and then see a socialist party rise in popularity before an election, they might choose to vote for the party, instead of abstaining from voting if they were planning to. On the opposite side, acceptance in a change in beliefs or morales. This could be if person A were to hold capitalist ideals, before being persuaded by a socialist speech, and then adopting their ideals.
Conversely, there are also two categories of nonconformity: independence and anticonformity. Independence is when one holds their own beliefs despite outside pressure. Using our previous example with person A, this would be if they held capitalist ideals and stuck to them despite outside pressure to change their beliefs. Essentially, independence is as if all external pressure to conform is irrelevant to the subject, so their beliefs remain unchanged. As the name suggests, anticonformity is the polar opposite of conformity; it is when one disagrees with an opinion and moves further away from it. If person A was a capitalist and witnessed socialist propaganda, they may believe they are being ‘brainwashed’ by socialism, and as a result lean even further away from socialist ideals, being determined to stay with their capitalist ones.
Obedience
Obedience is heavily related to the idea of conformity. Researches who study it are concerned with a reaction from a subject when they receive a command from a person in authority. This is often a good tendency, especially in the younger years of our development, where we are expected to obey authority figures such as teachers and parents. However, it can also be extremely dangerous, being responsible for events such as genocide, an example being the execution of over 10,000 civilians by the Khmer Rouge army, under the orders of a sole dictator (Pol Pot).
A psychologist named Milgram sought to know why ordinary German people executed Jews in the Holocaust under the orders of a few Nazi leaders. His experiment featured three people, an experimenter, a participant and a fake participant, who the real participant was fooled into thinking was real. The real participant would be assigned the role of teacher and the fake participant the role of learner. The teacher would then be asked to perform a memory test on the strapped down subject, the two separated by a wall. The consequence to answering a question wrong was an increasingly strong electric shocks administrated on the learner by the teacher under the orders of the experimenter for each wrong answer. As the learner was a fake participant, they purposely made many mistakes, so an increasingly large electric shock was administered. The starting voltage of the shock was 15V, and by the time 75V shocks were administered, the learner was making noises of pain. But throughout this whole process, the learner would never actually be shocked; the purpose of the setup was to convince the teacher that the learner was being hurt. After 150V, the learner would ask to leave, claiming they had heart trouble, but the experimenter would refuse.
The experimenter would only stop the process if the teacher stated four times he would not continue, otherwise he would continue to egg the teacher on. After 300V was being administered, no response was being made by the learner, leading the teacher to believe they were physically unable to respond. The experimenter would insist a lack of an answer was a wrong answer, and the shocks should continue. After 450V, the end of the generator, only then would the experiment end.
How many people do you think made it to the end of the experiment, thinking they were putting another human’s life at risk? At 65%, this number is much higher than you probably expected. This shows how even ordinary citizens can be convinced to kill under orders from a person in authority. This experiment is thought to be controversial, however, both from an ethical and informative standpoint. Many psychologists nowadays are unsure of the use of the test, with the pressure from the experimenter to administer pain not being an accurate recreation of the pressure the German citizens felt from the Nazis. Also, it is debated whether it was ethically right to subject the participants to the large amount of stress they felt, although the vast majority claimed they were glad to have taken part when asked afterwards. Finally, it is worth saying that outcomes of the experiment differed hugely, with some participants refusing to proceed after only a few minor shocks. This implies the effect of obedience widely differs from person to person.
This is an eye-opening set of experiments on an interesting aspect of human behaviour. Perhaps we can use these insights to reflect on our own behaviours which may sometimes seem incongruent.
References
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