Impact Of Conformity In Pop Music

Another principle at the socio-cultural level of psychological analysis is the idea that humans’ behaviour is influenced by the people around us, whether it be directly or indirectly.

Solomon E. Asch’s work investigating conformity, using the ‘Asch’s paradigm’ experiment design, is one of the most famous examples demonstrating conformity. Conformity is a social phenomenon where people feel the need to change in belief or behaviour in order to fit in with a group, whether it be through active or passive peer pressure.

Today, popular music is dominated by sales to teenagers and young adults due to the rise of digital sales, music videos and social media advertising. It is also a well-known fact that puberty is a time when conformity is found

The drastic socio-cultural changes that occurred following World War II in all participating and surrounding countries led to the rise in ‘pop culture’. An important aspect of pop culture is popular music of the age. Although the concept of music as a consumer product was already emerging by the 15th century, with musical eras like Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic coming and going over the centuries, it was not until after World War II that musical styles began to expand and change much more quickly than ever before. Each decade from the 1950s is widely known to the general population as having its own distinct style of popular music. Thus, the characteristics associated with members of these generations, or social groups, including the type of music preferred by members of the ingroups, could be considered a demonstration of social identity theory.

A recent study conducted by Dr Rachel Taylor and Dr Dan Bowers of the University of South Wales aimed to explore the relationship between musical stereotypes and the social identity processes that underpin them. In the first study participants were asked to choose 10 words from a list of 60 to describe the fanbase of their favourite music genre. They were questioned on 4 music genres. The researchers found that there were trends in the words chosen to describe the different music genres, and that each fanbase seemed to display a unique

They then compared these to the descriptions that rap fans gave when describing themselves. The researchers found that classical, rock and pop fans described rap fans in a far less positive way than rap fans described themselves, which could be evidence of social identity theory at work.

The outgroups (the non-rap fans) described rap fans as being “less intelligent”, “less committed”, “less emotional” and as “having more of a negative disposition” than when the rap fans chose words to describe themselves. These results suggest that people judge others based on the social groups they are members of, and that ingroup descriptions are likely to be more positive than outgroup descriptions.

This natural human desire to belong to a social group that possesses positive characteristics in order to raise self-esteem may be one of the reasons why a person’s social identity is one of the factors affecting a person’s music taste.

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