Conformity
Chapter 8
What is conformity?
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Doing what someone else wants you to
do –
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Whether or not you want to
Whether or not they are present
Whether or not they told you to
Whether or not they are a real person/group
What is conformity?
Do you “Press 1 now” when the voice on
the other end of the phone tells you to?
 Do you stop at stop signs?
 Do you hold for “important messages?”
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What is conformity?
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Both obedience and conformity are
generally good things.
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We teach our children to be obedient
and to conform.
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Failure to conform creates social strife
and violence.
What is conformity?
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Definition:
◦ A change in one’s behavior due to the real or
imagined influence of other people
What is conformity?
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Americans are generally cultural nonconformists and consider conformity an
implied threat to freedom.
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Don’t be a people pleaser.
Don’t be a crowd follower.
Think for yourself.
Stand up for what you believe.
Over my dead body
A hill on which to die
What is conformity?
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Often, when you are refusing to conform
to one group, you are conforming to
another.
Why do we conform?
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It helps the flow of life.
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We stand in line.
We wait our turn.
It helps things to stay organized.
It maintains fairness.
Why do we conform?
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Informational social influence – Do I really
know what to do?
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Social referencing
Bystander intervention
How to spell something
How to address someone
Which fork to use
Why do we conform?
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Sherif and the autokinetic effect
◦ People reached a common estimate of the
apparent motion of a dot of light (public
compliance)
◦ People kept the same estimate, even when
later doing the task alone (private acceptance)
Informational Social Influence
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Baron,Vandello & Brunsman (1996)
◦ Task – picking a perpetrator from a lineup
◦ Only saw slides for ½ second
◦ On some trials confederates were used
◦ Half of the participants were told the results
would be used to select accurate eyewitnesses
(and received $20.00) (High importance)
◦ High importance of the task led to greater
conformity (51vs. 35%)
When informational conformity
backfires.
Crisis – War of the Worlds – 1938
 Gustav Le Bon (1895) contagion
 Mass psychogenic illness
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When informational conformity
backfires
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Key Variables
◦ Ambiguity – no way to know
◦ Crisis – no time to think
◦ Experts – someone knows what to do
Normative Social Influence
Is based on the need to be accepted.
 Social norms are implicit rules for
acceptable behavior.
 Deviant group members are:
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◦ Ridiculed
◦ Punished
◦ Rejected
Cohesive, Group-oriented Cultures
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Japan
◦ A whole class or school will sometimes turn
against one student
◦ They will harass and bully the person.
◦ This may lead to the person committing
suicide.
◦ Bikikomori are those who have withdrawn
from social interaction and spend all their
time at home
◦ Being deprived of human contact is stressful,
traumatic, and psychologically painful.
Asch Line-judging Experiments
Not explained by informational social
influence
 Most people conformed on roughly onethird of the trials
 Seventy-six percent of participants
conformed at least once
 Fear of being a lone dissenter is strong.
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Social Disapproval
Berns et al., 2005
 Used fMRI to measure changes in brain
activity
 Error rate was 13.8% when people were
asked to match figures alone
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◦ When answering alone or conforming to group
wrong answers, brain activity showed in the
posterior areas associated with vision and
perception.
◦ When going against the group the amygdala
(negative emotions) and right caudate nucleus
(social behavior) lit up.
The Importance of Accuracy
Revisited
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Baron,Vandello & Brunsman (1996)
◦ This again involves picking the perpetrator from
a lineup. However, here the task is made easy.
Participants viewed each slide for 5 seconds and
were shown each pair twice. Importance
manipulations were done as in the other study.
◦ In this study, however, high importance caused
the participants to conform less – not more.
◦ Why?
What happens when you resist?
Stage 1: target of most communication as
groups members try to bring you back in
line.
 Stage 2: teasing comments at first, turns
negative
 Stage 3: the group withdraws and
communication with the deviant drops
sharply
 Stage 4: rejection of the deviant
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Factors in the Power of Normative
Social Influence
Strength: How important to you is the
group?
 Immediacy: How close is the group in
space and time?
 Group size: Number of people.
Conformity increases as the number goes
from 1-5. After that, it makes little
difference.
 Allies: Having an ally (another deviant)
encourages non-conformity.
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