Conformity

One of the most interesting forms of social influence is conformity. Conformity occurs when an individual changes his or her behaviour as a result of real or imagined group pressure. It is interesting because the pressure to conform can be imaginary or unspoken. An example would be arriving at a party to find people lined up at the door, and joining the waiting line instead of going past them through the door.

Norm Formation
Classic research by Muzafer Sherif in the late 1930s studied the power of conformity in forming norms or standards for behaviour.

In his study, Sherif had a group of subjects watch a small pinpoint of light in a dark room, and take turns calling out their estimates of how far the light had moved. In fact, the light was not moving at all; its apparent movement was the result of a well-known illusion. Sherif found that, although there was no "real" movevment, subjects called out answers. Further, over time their answers influenced each other, and a norm for the light's movement distance emerged for each group of subjects.

Sherif's work illustrated the power of social influence in conforming to imaginary norms. Subjects in his study relied on each other's answers to provide a standard of comparison for their own. Once a norm was established, it was seldom deviated from.

Pressure To Conform
The most famous experiment on conformity was a study of group pressure originally conducted by Solomon Asch in the late 1940s, Asch was interested in whether judgments of fact would be less susceptible to conformity pressures than judgments of opinion.

For example, imagine a teacher asking her students how many of them would like to cancel that day's class. This is a question of opinion rather than fact. Some students will probably want to hold class because they have prepared for it or travelled some distance. But if the majority votes for cancelling, the minority will probably conform with majority opinion, raising their hands along with the rest. It is only an opinion after all. It is not that difficult to give in to pressure when the question is a matter of taste, not fact. Asch's experimental situation presented subjects with decisions about mattters of fact, in which the majority disagreed with the obvious facts.

In Asch's experimental situation, a subject was grouped with several confederates in a line-length judgment task. Each person called out his judgment of the length of a vertical line presented to the group. Unbeknownst to the subject, on predetermined trials, the rest of the group unanimously called out obviously false judgments. Results indicated that, although these judgments were obviously false, subjects conformed and called out the same wrong answers on 37% of the trials.

Some subjects never conformed; Asch termed these the "independents". Others always conformed, a group Asch called "yielders". Most subjects confromed at least once. Asch concluded that eye contact and glaring were important aspects of the "pressure" the confederates put on the subjects. However, later research indicated that subjects often conformed with false group judgements even when the other members of the group were not physically present. Apparently group judgments are an important souce of influence, whether normative or informational.

Philosophy Class
A freshman in college started his first day of philosophy class. His professor was clearly an atheist, and started the class by saying the following:

"Students, is there anyone here who can see God? If so, raise your hand. If anyone can hear God, raise your hand." If anyone here can smell God, raise your hand."

After a short pause, with no response from any of the students, he concluded, "Since no one can see, hear, or smell God -- there is no God."
A student then raised his hand and asked to address the class. The student then asked, "Students, can anyone here see the professor's brain? Can anyone here hear the professor's brain? Can anyone here smell the professor's brain?"

After a short pause, he concluded, "Since no one can see, hear, or smell the professor's brain -- it appears he has no brain!"