Conformity And Nonconformity? Why Do People Conform?

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What are the things that make us conform? Why do certain people conform or choose not to conform? This topic in social psychology peaked my interest because I’ve noticed myself conforming on different occasions. Have you ever found yourself going along with what everyone else is doing? Why do you think you conform? While researching this topic I found some answers that will help elaborate on these questions.

Social influence is defined as the pressures of others affect the way people, which lead to conformity and compliance. One main reason that people conform is that they feel the need to always to be right. People want to obtain precise judgments of their reality, and they just assume that when others also agree on something, that the …show more content…

Well for me, I noticed that, whether it was deciding where to hangout with my friends, saying yes just to not start a disagreement. Or in class when my opinions differ sometimes I just go along with what everyone else is saying so I’m not left out. I would have to identify myself as a conformist in this context. It intrigued me to write about how people can be so easily led into pushing down their own beliefs to agree with everyone else in a social setting or private group. In other words Conformity is when a person changes their view on something or their behavior in certain ways to fit in with the particular group norm. It could be anywhere, whether in class or at work during a meeting. Factors that can influence feelings of certain pressure and insecurity can lead to conformity. Group size also plays an important role. The influence can decrease if there are more than 3-4 …show more content…

They were all seated in a room where they were told to say their judgment on the length of several lines showed to them. They were all asked which line was longer than the other, which were the same length, etc. The confederates were already prearranged to all give an incorrect answer to this test. Many subjects showed extreme discomfort in conforming, but most conformed to the majority view of the others participants in the room, even when the majority said that lines different in length by several inches were the same length. Control subjects with no exposure to a majority view had no trouble giving the correct answer. In other words the Asch experiment objective was to identify which of the three lines on a card were equal to the length of a comparison line. A few of the confederates were instructed to give the same wrong answer as the others. Asch had found that 76 percent of the subjects, who weren’t confederates, also ended up giving the same incorrect response even though the majority response was more than obvious it was wrong (M, Venkatesan: pg. 1,

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