8/3/2019 Conformityzoey

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Conformity.

Conformity is the tendency to align your beliefs and behaviours with the

people around you; it is defined as yielding to social pressure when no directrequest to comply with the group is made. It is a powerful force that can take theform of anything from overt social pressure to a subtler unconscious influence.

No matter how individual or independent a person may feel they are, the fact isthat human beings are driven by the desire to fit in and belong in a group. This

results in many people conforming, or just going with the flow in order to curryfavour amongst their peers. Conformity has such a strong influence on societythat it is impossible to understand human behaviour without it. Psychological

studies show that people will deny any evidence in order to conform with otherpeople, even if they have seen it with their own two eyes.

A social psychologist named Solomon Asch conducted a number of studies

during the 1950s in order to determine the true nature of conformity. Hegrouped seven people together, mixing six actors with one real subject who wasclueless to the real terms of the experiment as was the true focus of the

observation. Asch first asked the subject to judge the length of a line, which 95%of the subjects did accurately. However, most of the actors were then asked to lie

about what they judged the length of the line to be. After hearing the actors (whothey believed were simply other participants like them) judgement the majority

of the subjects changed the answer that they gave in order to match the actors.

The most important factor affecting conformity is the group size. Aschobserved that whilst a group of three of four people was very effective inchanging the attitude, any increase in number of people in a group also led to anincrease in the conformity rate. This is also true for the level of expertise, as the

conformity rate also goes up as leaders purported level of expertise goes up.

Another factor in conformity rates is trust, as if an individual has gainedsomeones trust then it is incredibly easy to influence their level of conformity.

People who manage not to conform to social pressure are often veryindependent in their thinking and have incredibly high levels of confidence. They

generally have a great deal of trust in themselves and their own opinions,meaning that they do not change their attitudes or personality even whenunder pressure. This is not to say that conformity is necessarily a bad thing, as it

can be good or bad. If an individual is conforming to the extent that they lose

their own identity then it is bad, but sometimes it can just be used to adhere tosocial norms and gain acceptance from others.