Conformity
People often choose to conform to society rather than to pursue personal desires – because it is often easier to follow the path others have made already, rather than forging a new one.
[2] This tendency to conform occurs in small groups and/or in society as a whole and may result from subtle unconscious influences (predisposed state of mind), or from direct and overt social pressure.
It is clear from this that conformity has a powerful effect on human perception and behavior, even to the extent that it can be faked against a person's basic belief system.
This is often referred to as groupthink: a pattern of thought characterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics, which ignores realistic appraisal of other courses of action.
[11] With the appropriate environmental influence, conforming, in early childhood years, allows one to learn and thus, adopt the appropriate behaviors necessary to interact and develop "correctly" within one's society.
[12] Conformity influences the formation and maintenance of social norms, and helps societies function smoothly and predictably via the self-elimination of behaviors seen as contrary to unwritten rules.
[18] It follows a U-shaped age pattern wherein conformity increases through childhood, peaking at sixth and ninth grades and then declines.
[19] Researchers have found that peer conformity is strongest for individuals who reported strong identification with their friends or groups, making them more likely to adopt beliefs and behaviors accepted in such circles.
This type of conformity recognizes that behavior is not always consistent with our beliefs and attitudes, which mimics Leon Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory.
Sherif suggested this was a simulation for how social norms develop in a society, providing a common frame of reference for people.
Solomon E. Asch conducted a modification of Sherif's study, assuming that when the situation was very clear, conformity would be drastically reduced.
[34] This experiment, led by psychology professor Philip G. Zimbardo, recruited Stanford students using a local newspaper ad, who he checked to be both physically and mentally healthy.
It was terminated due to the "guards" taking on tyrannical and discriminatory characteristics while "prisoners" showed blatant signs of depression and distress.
For one, it demonstrates how situations determines the way our behavior is shaped and predominates over our personality, attitudes, and individual morals.
Even though John Turner et al. argued that the post experimental interviews showed that the respondents were uncertain about the correct answers in some cases.
By closely examining the situation in which Asch's subjects find themselves they find that the situation places multiple demands on participants: They include truth (i.e., expressing one's own view accurately), trust (i.e., taking seriously the value of others' claims), and social solidarity (i.e., a commitment to integrate the views of self and others without deprecating).
Deutsch & Gérard (1955) designed different situations that variated from Asch' experiment and found that when participants were writing their answer privately, they gave the correct one.
Psychologists have constructed a mathematical model using these three factors and are able to predict the amount of conformity that occurs with some degree of accuracy.
Field studies on cigarette and alcohol abuse, however, generally demonstrate evidence of friends exerting normative social influence on each other.
However, a minority that makes a strong, convincing case increases the probability of changing the majority's beliefs and behaviors.
[48] Bond and Smith compared 134 studies in a meta-analysis and found that there is a positive correlation between a country's level of collectivistic values and conformity rates in the Asch paradigm.
Influenced by the writings of late-19th- and early-20th-century Western travelers, scholars or diplomats who visited Japan, such as Basil Hall Chamberlain, George Trumbull Ladd and Percival Lowell, as well as by Ruth Benedict's influential book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, many scholars of Japanese studies speculated that there would be a higher propensity to conform in Japanese culture than in American culture.
[50] The study published in 1970 by Robert Frager from the University of California, Santa Cruz found that the percentage of conformity errors within the Asch paradigm was significantly lower in Japan than in the United States, especially in the prize condition.
[61] They argued that because stereotypes used in studies are generally male ones (sports, cars..) more than female ones (cooking, fashion..), women felt uncertain and conformed more, which was confirmed by their results.
[65] Still, Eagly and Chrvala's results do conflict with previous research which have found higher conformity levels among younger rather than older individuals.
Milgram also conducted the same experiment once more, but told participants that the results of the study would be applied to the design of aircraft safety signals.
[79] Evidence has been found for the involvement of the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC) in conformity,[80] an area associated with memory and decision-making.
Opinions of others immediately change the brain's reward response in the ventral striatum to receiving or losing the object in question, in proportion to how susceptible the person is to social influence.
[79] The amygdala and hippocampus have also been found to be recruited when individuals participated in a social manipulation experiment involving long-term memory.
[82] Several other areas have further been suggested to play a role in conformity, including the insula, the temporoparietal junction, the ventral striatum, and the anterior and posterior cingulate cortices.
