Conformity Essay

1284 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Conformity theory

Conformity is a concept that has intrigued psychologists for decades; a concept that has been the foundation of numerous studies, books, and that has been subtly woven into the media. Most of the research done on conformity has to do with what can cause conforming behavior and when conforming behavior is most prevalent. There are generally two types of influences that can cause conforming behavior, informational social influences and normative social influence. Both deal with the when and why of conformity in society and what situations typically cause a group or one or two people to conform. The most powerful and dangerous type of conformity is conformity to authority, which can cause people to obey orders that they would normally not follow in any other situation. With that being said, informational social influence can fuel conforming behavior, especially in instances when the situation is a crisis, ambiguous, and when other people in the situation have authority or expertise. One example of informational influence and conformity is a study of conforming behavior to authority done by Milgram (1963). Milgram advertised his study as a way to test memory and learning and used male participants ranging from ages 20 to 50. One subject and one victim performed in each experiment, the subject was always the participant and the victim was always the confederate. To make it believable, Milgram told the participants that he wanted to test how much punishment is best for learning and told each participant to pick a slip of paper to determine which would be the teacher and which would be the learner. Both slips of paper were labeled with teacher, after drawing the slip of paper both the teacher and the learner were led to a room and the le... ... middle of paper ... ...rong simply because they believed the confederate had more knowledge and would choose the right answer. And though the situation was not as confusing as in other studies it still had the effect of making the participants look to others for guidance on how to precede in the giving their answers. In conclusion, informational social influence plays a large role in how and when people will give into conforming behavior. In both studies, the concept of informational social influence is used to test what the participants do; by adding that factors of putting the participants in an ambiguous situation, a crisis, or in a situation where they feel the need to look to someone with expertise to go forward. Both Williamson et al. (2013) and Milgram (1963) have proved how easy it is to give into influences and exhibit conforming behavior, even up to a possibly dangerous result.

Show More
Related

  • Judith Ortiz Cofer's Abuela Invents The Zero

    579 Words  | 2 Pages

    Claim: When making a decision, people are often influenced by the pressure society places on them in order to follow the social norm, or what is socially accepted.

    Read More

  • Much Ado About Nothing Essay: An Exploration of Conformity

    939 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice and Benedict rant about marriage for most of the beginning of the play, while Claudio raves about how wonderful it will be being married to Hero.  Yet in the end, Claudio exchanges his marriage to Hero for an opportunity to bash her in public, while Beatrice and Benedick marry despite that they were mortal enemies for most of the first three acts.  How did the situation swing around to this degree?  Beatrice and Benedick had been using the most extreme metaphors to demonstrate their scorn of each other and of marriage, and Claudio had been doing the same to demonstrate his love of Hero.  Not only did none of these three characters mean what they were saying, but meant the reverse, and the people that plotted to bring them together or pull them apart plotted because they understood on some level what each really wanted.

    Read More

  • The Definition Of Conformity And Non-Conformity In Society

    1805 Words  | 4 Pages

    The definition of conformity is the compliance with social standards and laws in a particular culture, environment, society and time. If this occurs the individual changes their attitudes, beliefs or actions to align more holistically with those in the surrounding groups and environment, as a result of real or perceived group pressure. This is ultimately a direct result of the power which a group has over the individual. There are two types of conformity, normative conformity, and informational conformity. The motivation behind normative conformity is the desire to be liked and accepted in society. This is most widely known as peer pressure. For example, a student begins smoking because their peers

    Read More

  • Solomon Asch Conformity Experiments (1951)

    1532 Words  | 4 Pages

    Participants were not under any explicit demand to conform, as they received no physical or verbal coercion to do so. The specific hypothesis centered on the idea, “if group pressure can play influence and effect individuals perception, decision and attitudes”. The independent variable will be “Procedure”, and the dependent variable is the “level of conformity did change”.

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative-It's Time To Purchase My First Car

    646 Words  | 2 Pages

    Perhaps the compliancy factor did not convince me to buy a car that day, because I didn’t feel obligated to buy the car; the car sales men were very rude and were clearly trying to take advantage of me. According to Cialdini, Cacioppo, Bassett, and Miller research shows that the these compliance strategies are a great tool for increasing profitable sales and for influencing our social behaviors, because people instinctively feel a sense of commitment and obligation to the products and the people they like (1978). For instance, when we ask a friend for a favor, we feel the need to reciprocate, because people want to be helpful. There is also a great importance of social compliancy in groups and to authority. All these social influences have an impact on how we respond to others requests, having an important impact on our behavior. (Meyer,

    Read More

  • Conformity and Obedience in Society

    939 Words  | 2 Pages

    Solomon Asch’s experiment in “Opinions and Social Pressure” studied a subject’s ability to yield to social pressure when placed within a group of strangers. His research helped illustrate how groups encourage conformity. During a typical experiment, members of the group were asked by the experimenter to claim two obvious mismatched lines were identical. The single individual who was not privy to this information was the focal point of the experiment. Twelve out of eighteen times the unsuspecting individual went along with the majority, dispelling his beliefs in favor of the opinions of the group.

    Read More

  • Essay On The Stanford Prison Experiment

    2272 Words  | 5 Pages

    Social psychology is a discipline that uses scientific methods to understand why and how people act and behave the way they do. "To understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human beings" (Gordon Allport, 1985). Conformity is encouraged by social influence to conform to different social groups and ways, whereas obedience to authority in social influence is where an individual acts the way the person in authority says so. Obedience is usually done through a hierarchy of power; the people at the top do the telling at the people at the bottom do the actions. When researching conformity and obedience it is vital to compare the experiments to real

    Read More

  • The Influence of Conformity and Obedience

    2493 Words  | 5 Pages

    Conforming is the act of bending to perceived group pressure and mimicking the actions or adopting the beliefs of others bringing the individual’s behavior within the constructs of a societal standard including law, etiquette, or fashion (Brownlee, 2004). Conformity can be an automatic response to situational norms. When unsure of their own ability to define “normal” accurately an individual will observe and take cues from those who appear confident (Franzoi, 2008). Situational factors that influence conformity include, the size of the influencing group, the cohesiveness of the group, and social support. On a personal level, the individual’s degree of independence, self-awareness, self-presentation, personal desire for control, and gender affect conformity.

    Read More

  • Obedience and Conformity

    521 Words  | 2 Pages

    The issue of why some people obey with out question or justify their actions has been of interest to psychologists and researchers for many years. Milgram (1974) suggested that we live in a socially obedient environment. Our experience has taught us that authorities are generally trustworthy and legitimate. This creates a socially obedient environment. Ado...

    Read More

  • Essay On Non Conformity

    686 Words  | 2 Pages

    In every society, there is conformity and nonconformity, although we may not notice it. Conformity is when someone is doing the same thing as others because they do not want to be the only one doing differently. Example, if there was a whole class raising their hands would you want to be the only one with your hand down, no so you would raise it with the rest of the class to not look like you don't know anything. This is called social pressures it when a large group is doing something and you're the only one not then you want to be doing whatever that large group is doing.

    Read More

  • Sigmund Freud's Theory Of Conformity

    1722 Words  | 4 Pages

    Conformity is defined as behavior in accordance with socially accepted conventions or standards. This is not a good or bad thing, this just is. It exists as a compliment to earlier humans congregating into larger groups, using agriculture and domestication to create sustenance. Also, conformity is essential for life. We need people to share the same ideas, ideologies and a way of thinking in order to work efficiently and effectively. There many examples that exist like, at work or in your house and even within yourself. Sigmund Freud has explained the phenomena of group psychology in a piece titled, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Using Freud’s theory of conformity I will explain the self, what we call “me”,and its different constituents using The Principles of Psychology by

    Read More

  • Conformity In Society: The Different Types Of Conformity

    1355 Words  | 3 Pages

    The term I chose to research was conformity. It is a way of following what others do either by peer pressure or not knowing certain information. Conformity impacts everyone socially and physically and is needed for the culture of others. We think and create different deciding factors for our decisions when impacted by conformity. There is two different types of conformity called Normative and Informational conformity which are both backed up by studies, one is helpful while I'd say the other one isn't. Then we read about an article on teen conformity that was informational and helpful. Even after all the research studied, I had questions that can or can not be answered yet.

    Read More

  • How Nice People Get Corrupted

    721 Words  | 2 Pages

    Conformity is defined as a change in behavior or belief to accord with others. (Meyers 170) What other people do and say can gradually influence others to deviate from ones beliefs and conform to others. One of the most famous documented studies to better illustrate this was a procedure performed by social psychologist, Solomon Asch.

    Read More

  • Conformity And Informative Influence

    569 Words  | 2 Pages

    Conformity is a way to make your way into a group. One can conform to positive or negative behaviors or mindsets. To conform one must change their beliefs or their behaviors in order to fall into a social norm. There are two main motives for conformity, informative and normative. Informative social influence is doing the right thing, this influence helps individuals to make the decision to follow the correct behavior instead of doing what the majority of people are doing. Normative social influence is following the behaviors of a group in order to be liked by them and to fit in. Both of these main motives for conformity influence everyone’s interactions with others, even my own personal relationships with others.

    Read More

  • Conformist Essay

    1274 Words  | 3 Pages

    Colin Wilson once said, "The Average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain." A conformist is a person who conforms to accepted behavior or established practices. That means someone who follows others, whether it is about decision making or their attitude. In today 's society I would say that most of the people are conformist, this includes both teenagers and adults. Being a conformist in my opinion can be bad and good for various reasons. If the attitude of the specific person has changed for the better, such as a snobby boy/girl becoming more respectful, that it definitely a positive change. Other people can change their attitude for

    Read More

More about Conformity Essay

Open Document