In this post I want to share my experience in conducting an experiment for the Social Psychology of Organisations class that I took last semester. Together with four friends at Westminster Business School we attempted to measure conformity among fellow students.
We chose to research conformity because we thought of the huge role it plays in our daily lives. Just think about it, how many times have you dressed, ordered something to eat or drink, or said something only because you wanted to match the environment? We definitely saw it in our behaviour and wanted some answers.
What is conformity?
Kiesler & Kiesler (1970) define conformity as ‘change in behaviour or belief toward a group as a result of real or imagined group pressure.’ It is a type of social influence and is one of the underlying features of human psychology and a basic fact of social life.
As indicated in the definition above, the fundamental aspect of conformity is the notion of group pressure. Defined by Kiesler & Kiesler as the ‘psychological force upon a person to fulfil other’s expectations of him’ it is a process by which a group attempts to exert influence over an individual.
Where does the pressure come from? Broadly speaking, the pressure to conform stems from various social norms, the rules of how every individual ought to behave in the society. These do not necessary have to be explicit - consider such customs as leaving a tip in a restaurant or arriving just a little bit late to a party.
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| Not all conform: Three Musicians by Pablo Picasso |
According to Baron et al., we conform to social pressures predominantly because of our desire to be liked and accepted by others and our need to be correct. Respectively, these are known as the normative and informational social influences.
Experiment
Our experiment was fairly simple. We were going to invite, one by one, ten unsuspecting students to take two tests, each consisting of eighteen questions. They would have to do it alongside four of the members of our group (pretending that they, too, were genuinely taking part in the study), all seated in one room, facing the moderator (fifth member of our group) who was going to ask them questions. These were to be answered out loud and in turns, by everyone.
Test 1 required open answers, whereas test 2 was “true or false”. While test 1 questions were varying in the level of difficulty a bit, e.g. “What is the biggest country on Earth in terms of population”? or “What is Chaplin’s first name”?, test 2 questions were plainly trivial, e.g. ‘Pyramids are located in Morroco, true or false’? We did this 10 times.
Now the trick was that in each of the ten sessions, the four of us who were pretending to be participants would provide unanimous answers to every question asked. More so, our answers would most of the time be incorrect – sometimes appearing to be simple mistakes but very often strikingly wrong! We hypothesised that the subjects would nevertheless go along with the group’s wrong answers. In other words, they would conform to the group!
Results
Honestly, we did not really expect amazing results, especially considering the informal nature of the study. It was hard for us to believe that people could say something they knew was incorrect. We were soon to prove wrong!
The first session kicked off, and a couple of questions passed without any signs of success. We felt kind of strange to say such nonsense like ‘It was Warner Brothers who invented Donald Duck’ or that ‘Australia is a former Canadian colony’. But what was our surprise when suddenly we had our participant agreeing to it! Overall results were pretty dramatic, as 9 out of 10 unsuspecting students yielded to group pressure and went along with our plainly wrong answers at least once.
Check out this short clip with some examples. Bare in mind that our subjects are always seated on the second seat from right.
After each session we interviewed our subjects and it was incredible to see how the theory matched practice. Students that conformed the most stated that it felt strange to say something different and that they did not want to step up to the front of the line.
Order! Order!
Conformity can be trouble. An interesting quote illustrates this:
“More crimes are done in the name of obedience than in the name of disobedience. It isn’t the rebel, the disobedient, the deviant or the maverick who is a threat to society - the real threat is the mindless masses who follow any authority without questioning” C.P. Snow, English physicist, 1905-1980.
Yes, indeed, conformity means that often individuals may find it difficult to raise their concerns or propose new and fresh ideas - and so, break the order. This can be particularly dangerous if the view held by the group is an erroneous one. On such occasion, with the threat of rejection at the doorstep, the one individual that can see the problem will more likely remain silent and the group will continue operating in a corrupt way.
It would be misleading to say that conformity is a bad thing. There are many advantages to it, most notably without conformity it would be very difficult to lead and manage others, and so to maintain order in organisations, as well as in the society as a whole. In this context, restrained individualism seems like a small price to pay.
With that said, ‘think different’ anyone? Come on, don’t be shy!
References
Baron, R. A., Byrne, D., & Watson, G. (2005). Exploring Social Psychology (4th ed.). Toronto, Ontario: Pearson Allyn and Bacon.
Kiesler, C. A., & Kiesler., S. B. (1970). Conformity. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
