Conformity

This week's post is a guided blog initiated by our instructor. It is about the chapter in our text relating to the subject of conformity in Social Psychology. Using our text, I will describe this subject below.

Conformity, compliance, and obedience together are all social influences that cause social pressure on the people they are directed towards. However, they each differ in one or more ways. Let's look at each separately.

According to the Markus, Fein, and Kassin, "conformity is the tendency for people to change their behavior to be consistent with group norms" (288). Also, compliance causes "changes in behavior that are elicited by direct requests" (268). Finally, obedience is "when the request is a command and the requester is a figure of authority" (289).

The best way to see the difference between these three social influences is by how they are measured. Conformity is measured by looking group norms, compliance by looking at direct requests, and obedience by an authority figure's influence.

However, conformity is not just limited to measuring behavior as compliance and behavior are. Conformity goes much deeper than that. Measuring conformity can give us an insight into the changes in perceptions and opinions as well as behavior, which means that we assume the internal (private conformity) changes go along with the external (public conformity), behavioral changes of conformity.

There are five distinct ways to measure the levels of conformity of an individual in social situations. The five social contexts Social Psychologists use to measure conformity are:

1. Group size
2. Awareness of norms
3. Having an ally
4. Age
5. Gender

First, when it comes to conformity it is difficult to ignore the pressure from others. Therefore, group size has an influence that is significant, but only to a point. You may have guessed that the bigger the group the more influence that group has on conformity of individuals. This is true, but there are certain scenarios where the validity of this statement can come into question. When there are individuals who are not willing to conform to the social pressures of the majority it can cause others to question the majority. This situation is what causes Social Psychologists to be careful in measuring conformity when it comes to the social pressures of group sizes.

Second, when an individual is aware of social norms, that individual is more likely to conform to the social pressures of those norms. Expectations are set by these norms and breaking the social norms have consequences.

Third, having an ally in dissent or someone else to share opinions or behaviors when a social situation arises can help measure conformity. It's like saying, "If my friends are smoking, then I can too". As individuals, we are more likely to do or think things that others are because it reduces the pressure of the situation.

Fourth, age can influence conformity whether it is similar or different than the individual(s) being pressured. You may have already heard the popular term "peer pressure". If people of similar age are causing the social pressure to conform, then the influence can be higher.

Fifth, gender groups can also influence the decisions, opinions, and behaviors you have when it comes to conformity. As a woman or man, consider what you would or would not do in certain social situations. How would you react to different social contexts? Women are more likely to conform to behaviors when it comes to style and fashion than men because of the social norms in Western society. Men are more likely to conform to sports than women, again because of these social norms. Yet, gender is not biology; meaning if you are a woman or man your conformity does not always depend on the social norm, but it is greatly influenced by it.

When it comes to conformity, it also depends on the type of society or setting of the social pressures. There are two distinct types of cultures today: individualistic and collectivistic. Individualistic culture tends to have influences of conformity that arise from the self. Collectivistic culture tends to have the greatest influences of conformity that arise from groups with a common goal.

Finally, the impact that social pressures of conformity have on people depend on three things summarized in the "Social Impact Theory". These three things are:

• strength of sources
• immediacy of sources
• number of sources

The strength of a source impacts the pressure of conformity because people with greater social influence like authority figures or people perceived to be credible in any way can increase the likelihood of someone conforming because of how these sources use their strengths.

The immediacy of sources is how close these sources are to the people being pressured by conformity. Their immediacy can make the pressure greater for the people targeted.

The number of sources is similar to what I discussed earlier about group size. The bigger the better, unless there are dissenters of course.

There is a lot of things that I wish I could have discussed in this post. I did not want to go off into tangents, though. So, if you want to discuss anything I didn't talk about but that is related to the subject of conformity, please comment below and I would be happy to discuss it with you.

Sources:

Fein, Kassin, and Markus. Social Psychology. 8th ed. 2011. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2008. Print.