PS1030 - Conformity

Conformity

• Conformity is a change in beliefs, opinions, and behaviours that occurs in response to real or imagined pressure from others.
• Social influence is how people affect each other, including changes in attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors.
• Compliance is responding favorably to an explicit request by another person.
• Obedience involves submitting to demands of an authority figure in an unequal power relationship.
• Everyday conformity involves adopting the actions and attitudes of those around us.

Different Types of Conformity

• Automatic mimicry is when people unconsciously adopt the behaviors and beliefs of others. This often happens in spontaneous and automatic ways without any clear intent to change one another.
  • An example study found participants mimicked confederates' behaviour, e.g., rubbing their face or shaking their feet.
  • This mimics the behaviors of others and is linked to the phenomenon of ideomotor action, which states that thinking about something increases the likelihood of actually performing the behavior

Informational Social Influence

• Informational social influence is a process in ambiguous situations where individuals look to others for guidance to gain accurate knowledge.
• Individuals tend to conform, believing others’ opinions carry more weight and are more accurate.
• This often happens in heightened uncertainty.
• It can lead to a descriptive norm where the perception of what most people do in a situation guides one's own behavior.

Misperceived Norms

• Individuals can misperceive norms and misjudge the behavior of others, especially concerning norms like excessive drinking.
• Overestimating these norms can lead to engaging in similar behaviors.
• Feedback about accurate behaviors can affect overall drinking behavior.

Asch's Conformity Experiment

• This experiment tested visual abilities of male college students to match a line to a comparison line.
• Confederates manipulated the responses, providing incorrect answers on some trials to see if the participant would follow suit.
• Results showed significant conformity, as 75% of participants gave at least one incorrect answer; 37% went along with the group.
• Key findings indicated that the presence of a single dissenter reduced conformity significantly.
  • A modified version of the experiment demonstrated that decreasing uncertainty and minimizing group pressure reduced the occurrence of conforming behaviors, particularly when responses were made privately .

Asch's (1951) experiment: Post-experiment answers

• Participants were more likely to conform when they felt uncertain and had doubts about their answers and judgments.
• Some participants reported believing the majority was wrong, but followed the group to avoid ridicule.
• Many believed the majority must be right, as the participant was the only one who thought differently.

Normative Social Influence

• Individuals conform to avoid disapproval or social sanctions such as rejection or isolation.
• Injunctive norms are widely held social beliefs for acceptable behavior within a context.

Informational vs. Normative Influence

• Informational influence happens when individuals are unsure and need to gain accurate information from others.
• Normative influence occurs when individuals conform to avoid disapproval and fit in.
• Informational influence often leads to internalizing the opinions or beliefs obtained, whereas normative influence mostly leads to superficial conformity without changing inner beliefs.

Majority Influence

• Majority influence occurs when the beliefs, attitudes, and values of the larger social group prevail.

Minority Influence

• Minority influence occurs when the beliefs, attitudes, and values held by the smaller group within a social group prevail and are adopted.

Moscovici et al. (1969) Blue/Green Study

• This experiment investigated how minorities could influence a majority's views regarding color perception, using blue and green.
• Consistent vs inconsistent minority behaviors were studied and the findings indicate that a consistent minority elicits more conformity among a majority.

The Power of the Minority

• Consistent and unanimous responses from minorities can influence majorities, leading to lasting attitude changes and impacting private acceptance, not just public compliance.

Minority Influence: Flexibility is Key

• Key takeaways involve compromise, especially when the majority engages in either early or late concessions that can impact the group's beliefs.

Situational Factors Affecting Conformity

• Group size: As group size increases, conformity also increases but this diminishes as the group size grows larger.
• Group unanimity: Consistency in a group's responses is even more impactful than size and the presence of a "dissenter" reduces conformity
• Expertise and status: High status individuals and experts exert heightened informational influence due to their presumed accurate knowledge.

Individual Differences in conformity

• Several personal characteristics affect a person's tendency to conform, such as low self-esteem, a strong desire for social approval, low IQ, heightened anxiety and feelings of inferiority/low status.

Cultural Differences in conformity

• Collectivistic cultures generally demonstrate higher levels of conformity than individualistic cultures, as seen in studies using Asch's line-judging task.
• In other experiments, cultural backgrounds influenced preferences for unique choices in design and theme.

Psychological Reactance

• Psychological reactance is a motivational state opposing social influence due to threats or elimination of freedom/choice.
• This often increases resistance to conformity.
• Results can be observed from experiments with varied signs on toilet stalls, producing more graffiti on signs suggesting prohibitions.

Is conformity a good or bad thing?

• Conformity can be both beneficial and detrimental, depending on the context.

Feed Forward

• Understanding social influence factors is pivotal to comprehending many aspects of human behavior (e.g., obedience, group psychology).
• This is particularly relevant for understanding and critiquing instances of propaganda or persuasion.

What did we learn?

• Conformity can be impacted by many factors such as situational characteristics, individual differences, and cultural background.
• These impact how one engages in majority and minority norms while conforming.