People To Conform

The attitude and behaviours of individuals can be seen to change when they are placed within a group environment. This essay will demonstrate that there is a tendency for people to conform to the “code of conduct” that is acceptable within the group but may not necessarily reflect how they would conduct themselves as an individual. A group is “any number of people who interact with one another, are psychologically aware of one another, and perceive themselves to be in a group” Schein (1988) (p. 145). In my opinion groups establish behaviours that each member needs to be seen to embrace. Break down of paragraphs

Groups can be either formal or informal. When a group is formal, they are brought together to achieve a specific set of objectives and are often concerned with the co-ordination of activities. However relationships are often personal and also tend to satisfy psychological and social needs within an informal group. The purpose of groups being established could be to encourage skill sharing and training, to carry out specific tasks or to

372). People tend to conform for two main reasons: because they want to fit in with the group (normative influence) and because they believe the group is better informed than they are (informational influence). Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, whereby 50 male students from Swarthmore College in the USA participated in a ‘vision test’. A participant was placed in a room with seven confederates to test whether he would answer individually or go against his instinct and give in to group pressure. There were 18 trials in total and the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 trails (called the critical trials). Asch was interested to see if the real participant would conform to the majority