When is conformity desirable

The theory of cognitive dissonance predicts this, and the experiment by Kiesler and DeSalvo revealed the process at work.

Thus, it is not always possible to distinguish between the reasons that lead to private acceptance and those that cause compliance. Nevertheless, researchers have done some studies that relate specifically to compliance or to private acceptance.

Asch study. Imagine the following situation: You consent to participate in an experiment that you think is about perception. You show up at the site of the experiment and find eight other people waiting.

The experimenter says that the nine of you will perform the study together. The researcher takes you all into a room, where you line up and face a viewing screen. You are the seventh person in the line. The researcher flashes a slide on the screen showing this series of lines:. The person conducting the study asks which of the lines on the right is the same length as the "standard" on the left.

The first person in the line answers, "A. When your turn comes you say, "A," and think about how obvious the answer is. The second trial in the study is similar to the first. The lines look like this:. On the third trial, the lines look like this:. The researcher begins to go down the line again, asking the participants for answers.

The first person says, "A. The second person answers, "A. The third person also says, "A," as does the fourth. You cannot believe what you are hearing, but now the fifth and sixth participants answer, "A. What do you say? This situation is the prototype for a series of studies performed by Asch , Researchers have interpreted his experiments as being relevant to compliance. Unknown to the real participant, the other eight "participants" in the line were confederates working with the researcher.

Asch instructed the confederates to unanimously give the wrong answer during 12 of the 18 trials. He intended their answers to be so obviously wrong that the real participants could not fail to be amazed at the discrepancy between what they saw and what they heard.

Scientists have made the assumption that if the real participant in Asch's study conformed with the incorrect confederates, the conformity was compliance, not private acceptance. This assumption requires some further analysis. Numeric results. First, let us examine the numeric results of Asch's experiment. On the average, 3. We can compare this outcome with the results from control groups.

In the control groups, participants could see what others did, but they did not verbalize their own choices. Hence, there was no pressure to conform. These participants erred an average of only. Thus, it seems that the high level of conformity in the experimental trials was due to group pressure. The pressure successfully led the test participants to give an opinion that they did not really share.

However, this overall conformity result is misleading. It masks the great individual differences among the participants. Out of participants, 29 did not ever conform with their group, 33 conformed on eight or more trials, and the remaining 61 participants went along with their groups only on occasion.

Only As we can see, we must keep these individual results in mind as we examine the assumption that Asch's experiment shows compliance at work. Postexperimental interview results.

Next, let us look at the results of postexperimental interviews with the participants. These are crucial to our analysis of Asch's study. Participants who never conformed reported that they had not conformed for one of two reasons.

Some did not conform because they were confident that their choices were right, and they were confident even though they acknowledged that they had been deviant in the face of unanimous agreement among the confederates.

Others who had not conformed claimed that they had concentrated totally on the demands of the task, and they had not really noticed what the confederates said. As for the conformists, a small percentage of them claimed to actually have seen the wrong line as a correct match. If these participants were telling the truth, we must conclude that private acceptance was at work in Asch's study.

These participants privately accepted the belief of the majority opinion. They were not simply complying with the group. About half of the rest of the conformists claimed that they had seen the lines correctly but that when they heard the majority choice, they decided that they must have been wrong. They then went along with the group. Whether this is compliance or private acceptance is debatable. However, the remaining conformists clearly complied. They said that they thought their choice was correct but that they had gone along with the group anyway.

Thus, as we can see, we cannot assume that Asch's experiment revealed solely elements concerning compliance. It appears that perhaps both types of conformity, compliance and private acceptance, were at work in his study. Nevertheless, Asch's work reveals a great deal about compliance. He also performed variations on his original test that yielded further findings. In addition, other researchers have been able to build on Asch's work. Asch compared his original findings with the results of some variations on his first test procedure.

Some examples of his experiments, along with their results, are:. A test with two "real" participants instead of one. If one of the two did not immediately comply, the other knew that he or she had an ally. This circumstance lowered the conformity rate to A study that had one confederate who always answered correctly. The real participant now always had an ally. This decreased the conformity rate further, to 5.

We can conclude from this test that one ally is enough to markedly decrease conformity when someone faces an overwhelming majority. An experiment in which a confederate answered correctly at the beginning and then soon "deserted" to the majority. This situation did not help the real participant's courage.

The conformity rate was A study that had a confederate who stopped conforming and started to say the right answer, thereby joining the real participant.

This was quite helpful for the participant and lowered conformity rates to 8. Asch also varied the number of confederates facing a lone test participant. He did this to discover whether conformity would increase as the size of the opposing majority grew.

As you recall, the control groups had participants who conformed at the rate of only. The results when Asch increased the majority size to various levels were:. As the numbers show, there is a high percentage of conformity when a lone dissenter faces a unified majority of only three people. It appears that this small group size is sufficient to cause a conformity rate that is close to maximum potential.

Increasing the number of confederates beyond three does not seem to raise conformity levels significantly. Gerard study. More than a decade after these original experiments, Gerard examined the plight of the lone dissenter. He applied the tenets of cognitive dissonance theory to the results from Asch's study. As Gerard pointed out, the naive participant is faced with two unpleasant choices in Asch's experiment. He or she can conform, in opposition to his or her true impressions, or he or she can dissent in the face of possible ridicule and embarrassment.

Both choices lead to dissonance. We can see how conformity would cause a state of dissonance in Asch's experiment. The compliant participant has three internal statements that reveal how the internal conflict occurs. He or she is thinking, for instance, "I saw that line C was closest to the standard," "I said that line A was closest to the standard," and "Line A and line C cannot both be closest to the standard. Gerard hypothesized that a compliant participant could lower his or her internal dissonance as the experiment continued.

The participant could do so by. This is what a small majority claimed to have done in Asch's study. Deciding that what they see is wrong. Many participants did this. Attributing the responsibility for what they say to the group. In this way, they feel that the group pressured them to say the wrong thing and that they can comply with a clear conscience. Quite a few of Asch's participants relieved their dissonance in this way. It is similarly true that deviation, as well as conformity, leads to a state of dissonance.

The participant feels that, "I said that line C was closest to the standard," "The group said that line A was closest," and "I am a member of the group. A person could do this by telling himself or herself something like, "I know I am a member of this group, but I don't care whether the group likes me. I will continue to say the truth.

Gerard saw these conditions at work in Asch's experiments. Gerard took these findings and hypothesized that a participant's first choice of behavior is important. The person can choose to deviate or to conform on the first trial. Whichever action the person chooses, his or her cognitions will probably change so that internal dissonance will decrease in subsequent trials.

For example, Joe feels pressured by his group of friends to help them steal a car. Internally, Joe does not believe that he should help them. Joe needs to decide what he will do the first time his friends ask him to steal. Let us say that, as a first example, Joe does not go along with his friends. To have internal harmony, Joe dissociates himself from the group and decides that these particular friends are not very important to him.

As time goes by and as his friends pressure him to steal other things, the likelihood is that Joe will continue to refuse. He can do this because the group does not mean very much to him anymore. On the other hand, if Joe steals a car the first time, it is likely that he will continue to do so.

He will probably tell himself that the group is right and that stealing is not so bad, in order to lower his internal dissonance. As you recall, there were consistencies in individual participants' behavior over trials during Asch's study.

These results supported Gerard's hypothesis. What is interesting about the dissonance interpretation of Asch's study is how it relates to an idea we discussed earlier. As we showed, a member will continue to disbelieve a group's opinion if he or she blames the group for his or her act of compliance. If, for instance, Joe is forced to go with his friends and steal the car, Joe will probably not come to believe that stealing is all right. This is similar to the third response that we noted above for people who comply with a group.

In fact, a person who feels this way may come to dislike the group and deviate more. However, once the compliant member comes to blame himself or herself for compliance, the stage is set for the person to begin to privately accept the group's decision.

If this happens, in all likelihood the person will like the group more. This is the method by which "brainwashing" can occur. For instance, if Joe's group taunts him by saying that he is just like them or he would not have had them for friends in the first place, Joe may begin to feel personally responsible for having friends who ask him to steal. He may begin to believe his group and start to think that stealing is all right.

If this happens, Joe's group has successfully "brainwashed" him. Private acceptance can occur in other ways also.

The following experiment shows this. Private Acceptance. Sherif study. Imagine the following circumstances: You have again consented to participate in an experiment that you think is about perception. This time the experimenter promises you that no confederates will pressure you to do anything.

The researcher takes you into a dark room, where you are alone. Suddenly, a point of light appears before you. It seems to move erratically for a few seconds, and then it disappears. The experimenter asks you to report how far the light appeared to move. There is a problem, however. You are not sure how big the room is. Nor do you know how far the light was from you.

In other words, you have no frame of reference against which you can compare the light's movement. How can you make your judgment when you have no frame of reference or basis that you can use to evaluate the light? This is the prototype procedure for a series of studies that Sherif performed in In reality, the light did not move at all. What occurred was a physiological phenomenon that scientists call an " autokinetic effect. Subjective standards. Sherif's first studies showed that his participants quickly established subjective standards that they could use as points of reference.

They would then judge the amount of apparent movement against these "standards. The participants would often use their first judgment and the movement that they saw in it as their standard for comparison. They would then use the immediately subsequent judgments in order to estimate the range of possible movement for the light.

In Sherif's study, there was a wide range of standards that the participants created. The smallest standard for the range of movement for the light was about one inch. By contrast, the largest standard was about 7 inches. Once an individual established a subjective standard, he or she continued to use that standard in subsequent experimental sessions. A group "norm" for judgment. Sherif's next concern was to discover what would occur if individuals performed the task in groups. In the groups, the participants announced their estimates, one by one, in one another's presence.

We can hypothesize two possible results for this study. As you recall, the light does not actually move. Instead, the movement that someone observes is actually a result of his or her own unique visual system.

Thus, one possible result for the study could be that each participant would "see" very different amounts of movement. If this happened, each person would have a personal standard for judgment, and the other group members would not influence this standard. A second possibility could be that each person, having no standard to begin with, would instead look to other group members for an idea of how to judge the movement.

The individual judgments would then start to influence one another. This would result in a group standard that all members would adopt. Sherif asked some participants to begin the study by performing one series of judgments alone.

He then asked them to work in groups of two or three and do three more series of judgments, doing each series on a different day. Some of the groups were made up of participants who had created very diverse subjective standards during their individual judgments. When these people came together in groups, they showed marked convergence of their standards during the very first series of evaluations. Their standards continued to converge during their second and third series of trials together.

However, their ideas of criteria never completely converged. This implies that their original, individual standards still had some effect as they worked together. Nevertheless, it was also clear that the group had created a norm for judgment. Sherif asked a second sample of participants to make three series of judgments in groups and then to do one series alone.

In this case, the group members established a very close convergence of their individual standards almost immediately. Their ideas converged more so than at any time for the previous groups.

After convergence, the group norm for judgment averaged about three to four inches. Further, the groups retained their initial norms throughout the other two group sessions. In the individual trials, the participants further continued to use the same group norms for judgment. This occurred even when the individual trials occurred as much as six months after the group sessions.

Divergence among the participants' judgments did begin to occur during the end of the individual series. It would be interesting to discover how much more divergence from the group norm would have occurred if the participants had performed more individual sessions. Sherif's conclusions. Sherif argued quite convincingly that his results are an example of private acceptance and not an example of compliance.

First, Sherif showed that the only standard for judgment in his study was "social reality. In Asch's experiment, the perceptual difference between the standard and the line that the confederates "chose" was objectively clear. It was so clear that more than 99 percent of the time the control groups made correct judgments. In Sherif's study, on the other hand, the standard for judgment came only from the "reality" that the group created. It was not objective. In fact, we can liken Sherif's experiment to an accuracy task, such as the one we described in Chapter 2 when we examined Gordon's work.

For Gordon's task, the average of the participants' judgments was the best answer. If we make such a comparison, the participants' "strategy" of convergence would be optimal in Sherif's study. Second, Sherif's participants continued to use the group standard in subsequent individual sessions. This implies that they actually believed in the group's opinion. Much later, in , Sherif conducted further research. In these studies, the participants "accidentally" overheard another participant's judgment while they waited to make their own.

The participants never met each other. Even so, the judgments of the participants approximated the ones that they had overheard. It is unlikely that people would merely be complying in such a circumstance.

There was no group pressure for the participants to conform to the standard that they had heard. We can further clarify the differences between the Asch and Sherif studies by comparing the demands that the studies made on the participants. In the Asch studies, the perceptual task was clear enough that the participants should have been certain of the correct answers. Of course, the unified response of the confederates was bound to make the participants less certain.

However, despite this fact, the participants found Asch's perceptual task very clear. The test was so unambiguous that most of the participants rarely questioned their perception. They either stuck to their guns a majority of the time, or they complied to save face, not because they mistrusted their senses. In the Sherif studies, the perceptual task was so vague that most participants did not have much confidence in their judgments.

Research on other topics has shown what happens when people are uncertain about their judgments or decisions. They react by looking elsewhere for information that could help them. In Sherif's experiment, the only place the participants could go for additional information was to one another.

In fact, the people in Sherif's experiment should have had more confidence in the group's standard for judgment. It was natural that they looked to the group for help. This led to the participants' private acceptance of the group standard.

In contrast, the only participants in the Asch study who came to trust the group judgment more than their own were those who privately accepted the wrong line as correct. Thus far, we have considered conformity an individual process.

We have shown that individuals often place themselves under great pressure to conform when they face a disagreeing majority. This internal pressure may lead people to conform merely in their behavior because they desire to impress a group or belong to it.

This kind of conformity is compliance. The personal pressure may instead lead people to conform in attitude also. This private acceptance could occur because people desire to maintain consistency or to lower uncertainty about their cognitions.

Whether a person submits to this pressure is an individual decision. However, we must not overlook the fact that normal group settings are unlike the Asch and Sherif studies. A group can add to this internal pressure by putting a great deal of overt pressure on dissenters to make them conform or, in some cases, to continue to deviate.

Now we will move on to a general discussion of deviance. As part of this examination, we will describe a study concerning the forms that group pressure can take. As we said before, the first and foremost reason people conform is that group members must do so to make decisions.

The foremost reason for deviance in groups relates to this idea. People deviate so that the group can make good decisions. It is unlikely that a group's first proposal is the best that it can possibly make.

Like to go your own way? Most of us actually prefer to follow the pack, according to UBC research. And those things are often good and useful. We just need to know that most people do those things. With your limited information, you are more likely to move in the direction of opposing abortion rights rather than supporting them. Corroboration comes into play because people who lack confidence in their views tend to have more moderate opinions. It is for this reason that cautious people, not knowing what to do, are likely to choose the midpoint between relevant extremes.

In this sort of environment, you will become more confident that you are correct and be more likely to move in an extreme direction. Social comparison leads us to want to be perceived favorably by members of our group.

If our group is strongly in favor of gun control, we will naturally gravitate to that position to win applause from our group. For Sunstein, the downsides of conformity are most concerning in his profession: the law. He believes that conformity can undermine our system of deliberative governance, the courts, and the undergraduate and law school education. The book argues in favor of the checks and balances that exist in the federal system, where cascades can be broken by a House and Senate that are often at odds, for instance.

He also argues that freedom of association provides a safeguard against informational and reputational influences that can lead people to conform without considering the downsides of a point of view or plan of action. Citing the raft of studies showing that the presence of a dissenting judge on federal panels can significantly change outcomes, Sunstein argues for greater diversity on the federal bench.

Lastly, Sunstein dives into the debate over affirmative action in higher education. We have to pay a fine, whenever we violate the rules and regulations. For example, Driving at the left side is the rule, which we have to follow by hook or crook, though sometimes, we do not find it relevant. But, we are driving on the left side because the whole society is doing so.

Whenever we meet the person, we usually greet him with the word Hello, or some other addresses. It is the social norm, which we follow because society wants us to follow them. In case we do not greet the person, we are assumed to be mannerless or rude.

We always stand in lines, be at a bus stop or any other place, just because other people are doing so. If somehow we broke the queue due to any reason, we are often offended by the people around and may get punished by the laws. The human population is a herd. They are following each other since the very start of life.

We are thoughtlessly following our fashion icons or other people.