22.7: Conformity

We comply with someone’s wishes if we do what they ask us to do. Conformity involves a subtler pressure, and we are often unaware of its influence. Conformity may result either from a desire to be right (this is sometimes called informational influence) or from a desire to be liked, to belong, or to seem normal (normative influence).

Informational influence leads to what is sometimes called social proof. We use social proof when we attempt to determine what is correct by seeing what other people think is correct. This is often a good way to proceed. If we aren’t sure which fork to use for the salad at a fancy party, it is natural to see which fork others are using. If we aren’t sure what the speed limit is, it makes sense to match our speed to the average speed of other drivers. And in ambiguous situations, we often think that other people have a better idea of what is going on than we do (while they may be thinking the same thing about us).

But social proof isn’t always good. When people are about to vote on some important issue in a meeting, some of them first look around to see how others are voting, and then try to go with the majority. And under the wrong conditions, social proof can lead to disaster. One of the reasons many Germans went along with the Nazis was that many other Germans did so too.

In the case of normative influence, we go along to get along, to be liked, accepted, or at least not despised. Normative influence can lead people to conform publicly, but they may not privately accept the views they act like they have accepted. Sometimes normative influence only involves an isolated action, but it can involve norms that affect us on many occasions.

Norms are explicit or implicit rules that tell us what sorts of behavior, attitudes, beliefs and even emotions are appropriate in situations. For example, in our society it is appropriate to be angry under some circumstances (e.g., when we see an injustice committed) but not others (e.g., if someone unintentionally mispronounces our name).

The Autokinetic Effect

Muzafer Sherif (1906-1988) was one of the pioneers of experimental social psychology. He was born in Turkey but came to the United States and did much of his work at the University of Oklahoma. One of his most famous studies involved a perceptual illusion known as the autokinetic effect, but the experiment was really about group norms and conformity.

You are blindfolded and led into in a dark room; you aren’t sure where the walls are, or the size of the room. If someone shines a tiny spot of light on a fixed spot on the wall in front of you, it will appear to move, even though it is completely stationary. This is the autokinetic effect; it is a standard perceptual illusion. Of course, if people don’t know about this illusion, they will think the spot of light really does move, and then disappear. But people differ a good deal in how much they think it moves. Some think it’s just a few inches; others think its several feet.

Sherif told his subjects that they were participating in an experiment on perception and that their task was to estimate how far the light moved on each of a several trials. When subjects performed the task by themselves, each developed a characteristic response (it moved two inches; it moved a foot and a half).

In another condition subjects worked in groups of two or three. In these conditions, the subjects’ estimates of the distance the light moved would converge until they were in very good agreement. Group norms emerged. Different groups would settle in on different norms, but the norms within each group were quite stable. In another condition, Sherif introduced a confederate into some of the groups who was forceful enough to get the rest of the members to adopt his norms.

The norms established by a person’s group persisted for at least a year (when the subjects were brought in and retested), and as members gradually left the group and were replaced by new members, the norms were passed down to later generations. Although the group members did not realize it, there were powerful pressures in the situation that led them to conform.

Ash’s Conformity Studies

Solomon Ash thought that Sherif had exaggerated the degree to which people conform, and in a famous series of studies conducted in the early 1950s, he set out to show the limits to conformity. To his surprise, he found something very different. In a typical Ash experiment, a group of experimental subjects were seated in a semicircle around a table. All but one of the people were confederates, accomplices who were in on the experiment. But the lone subject was led to believe that these other people were subjects too.

The people around the table were shown a series of cards, two at a time. The card on the left had a single vertical line, the standard. The card on the right had three vertical lines; one line was the same height as the standard line (the one on the first card), and both the other lines clearly were not (as in Figure 22.7.1). The difference was completely obvious to anyone with normal vision, and when subjects in a control condition were shown the cards, only 5% of them made a mistake about which line on the second card matched the line on the first.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Which Line Matches A?

The experimenter then asked the people in the group to say which line on the second card was the same height as the line on the first. One by one they gave their verdicts, working their way around the table to the lone subject. Sometimes the confederates gave the correct answer, but sometimes they didn’t. When they all agreed in the wrong response, there was pressure on the subject to conform. On 37% of the trials, subjects went along with an (obviously) incorrect response, with about three-quarters of the subjects going along at least once.

It would not be surprising if the rate of conformity differed from one culture to another, and this has been found to be the case. In countries that stress the importance of the group, there is more conformity. A striking thing about Ash’s studies is that he found so much conformity in the United States, where the value of individualism is so strongly stressed. Many similar experiments have been conducted in this country over the years. Most find slightly lower rates of conformity, perhaps because many people have become more willing to challenge authority, but Ash’s basic results have held up.

Ash found that if there was only one confederate, the subject wouldn’t conform. But perhaps the most important finding was that if even one of the confederates gave the correct response, the subject almost always gave the correct response too. The presence of even one dissenter among a group of conformists was usually enough to undermine the group’s influence.

Pressures to conform can be nearly irresistible, and often we go along without giving it any thought, by habit. The dark side to Ash’s studies is that even when the correct answer was very clear and the subject didn’t know any of the people in the group around the table, conformity was common. What would happen if the issue was murky, or if the group included one’s friends and people she admired?

Exercises

1. What would you have predicted would have happened in Ash’s study if you heard it described but weren’t told the results?
2. What would you have predicted that you would have done in Ash’s study if you heard it described but weren’t told the results?
3. What do you think that you would have done if you had been in Ash’s study?
4. Why do you think the presence of a single dissenter could radically decrease the amount of conformity?