Conformity Makes People Conform

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According to Mark Twain, a famous literary author “We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going and then go with the drove” (Kassin, Fien, & Markus, 2011 p. 251).
The quote by Mark Twain is how conformity works, this does not mean that people are not individuals, but as people they see what others are doing and they follow along. Social psychologists since the early 1930’s have tried to understand why people change their minds and conform to a group setting. Since then there have been multiple studies conducted on conformity and what makes these people conform to another. These studies have also focused on several different areas of conformity; group size, gender roles, obedience, and compliance. Even though conformity is …show more content…

Conformity is the tendency to change our perceptions, opinions, or behavior in ways that are consistent with group norms (Kassin, Fien, & Markus, 2011 p. 254). Gender Role: The public image of being male or female that a person presents to others (dictionary.com). This paper will define conformity, the types of conformity; normative and informative, why people conform and what affect gender roles have on it. When looking at people one would think that they are individuals which think and do things on their own, however, while doing their individual activities they are being influenced on the outside by either one person or a group of people, known as conformity. People do not realize that they are conforming when they are following simple rules like standing in a line or following laws. This is due to the social norm of everyday life. As defined by www.dictionary.com (2014) a social norm is an expected form of behavior in a given situation. Social …show more content…

There are several different factors that play into why someone conforms. Group size is a large part of why a person will conform, while other factors are informative and normative. The Sherif and Asch studies demonstrate that people conform for two very different reasons: informative and normative (Kassin, Fien, & Markus, 2011 p. 257). Think about a big game, football, baseball, soccer. A group stands up and starts yelling defense, then others join in, soon the entire section is yelling defense. Everyone that joined in was influenced by the group of people that stood up. When there is more than one person doing something there is higher possibilities that people with conform to what that group of people is doing. Going to the bathroom, if all the toilets are taken, a line forms, this a social norm and people conform to standing in a line. Informative influence is when people want to be right because the rest of the group agreed on it, this is them wanting to make a correct judgment on a topic. This is why when a crime happens the police want to separate the witnesses before they begin talking with others, once they talk to another witness their interpretation of the event get skewed because of the informational influence from the other. Normative influence is a person wanting to feel they are normal in a group. The person does not want to be wrong so they agree with the rest. This fear of being

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