Conformity, Obedience, and Compliance

CONFORMITY, OBEDIENCE, AND COMPLIANCE

Conformity involves a change in a person s behavior or thinking in order to agree with a larger group, even if they really don t agree with them. Experiments have been done in which there are confederates who are in on the experiment and intentionally sway the subject s opinion about something. Many people are swayed by others and go along with the group. The influence that the majority has on the thoughts or behavior of a single person is called the Asch effect, which directly relates to conformity.

According to the Asch effect, the size of the majority makes a difference up to a point. Very large groups do not necessarily have much greater of an impact as a moderately large group. If there is another dissenter, conformity drops to nearly zero percent. If the responses are made public, this increases the conformity rate.

Compliance is basically a form of conformity. If a vote on something in a group is public, the chances that others will agree to the majority is greater. Compliance is when a person goes along with the request of the group, even if the person does not agree with the group s request. This is why government elections are kept completely private.

There are two reasons why a person will conform in a group. In normative social influence, a person will conform in order to be accepted by the group and to fit in. With informational social influence, the conformity happens because of a belief that the group is somehow competent and has a handle on the correct information. Interestingly, in today s time, conformity is less important and less likely to occur than years ago. The person s gender, age, and socioeconomic background plays a role in who conforms and who doesn t.

Obedience is different from conformity in that it involves a change in behavior as a result of the actions or wishes of an authority figure. Most people are obedient because they do not want the negative consequences that might occur if they do not comply. This is a natural phenomenon that can cause people to do things that they would not otherwise do.

Groupthink is the power of a group to influence an individual. Groupthink involves the modification of the opinions of the people in the group so that everyone agrees with the