Women Conformity Essay

Conformity is the process in which a person’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors under social pressure result in following those around them (McLeod, 2016). Between men and women, conformity can differ based on gender and the environment they were raised in. Within stereotypical gender roles, it has been researched various times in correlational data on which gender displays conformity characteristics more often than the other. Studies related to conformity can provide evidence for marketing opportunities, political campaigns, or even provide data for research as to why people conform or fall into authoritative roles.

In the Stanford Prison Experiment (Banks, Haney, & Zimbardo1973), a study was conducted about interaction between guards and

The results suggested that women are more likely to conform when faced with a male mate and men were not, as they preferred to come across as unique and independent to their prospective partners. Furthermore, they addressed that the men felt that if they came across as unique and independent they would separate themselves from the other competition faced in their partners choice. Therefore, this study found that generally women conformed more often than men in order to appeal to the opposite sex.

In an interesting study on tomboy resistance and conformity, the researcher, Carr (1998), tests gender identity and conformity to social norms in women. Her results found that gender identities are created and maintained from internalized practices of gender resistance and conformity. The questions she provided to subjects were focused on their environmental factors, and their relationships with their families. Despite her research providing adequate information on conformity in women, the study is solely focused on women of different ethnicities and no male

The robbers cave experiment shows that conflict can transition into cooperation when subjects are faced with a set of activities. The researchers held different stages, the first stage was the children separating into two groups and making connections with the boys within those groups. In the second stage, or conflict stage, the two groups were pitted against each other to fight for limited resources. Some boys became aggressive, causing the rest of their groups to follow suit. This occurrence proved the researchers’ hypothesis to be correct, that intergroup conflict occurs when two groups are competing over limited resources. Regardless of the results, this study was also biased due to only using young white males instead of including different ethnicities and the opposite sex to supply the researchers with more evidence on intergroup conflict and