As human beings, we usually want to fit into the society we live in. Social psychologists explain this behavior with conformity. Conformity is changing one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of others. We can see conformity in the most extreme examples as well as in daily life. In social psychology, we can find various kinds of experiments about conformity, such as Muzafer Sherif’s autokinetic studies.
In this study, Sherif wanted to examine how other people can be a source of information. Participants were placed in a dark room and asked to focus their attention on an invisible point of light that was 15 feet away, projected onto the walls. The participants were told that the light might appear to move, but it wasn’t actually moving. At first, the participants were asked to give estimates of how much the light was moving in both directions and distances. Sherif found that the individual opinions of participants were very different. Some could see more movement, while others could see less.
The participants were then divided into three groups and asked to discuss their views on the movement of light. Sherif called upon the participants to repeat their estimates after the discussion. Sherif observed that individual estimates in the groups tended to converge over a series of trials. To be more in line with the consensus of the group, participants adjusted their views. Sherif distinguished between private conformity, which is a genuine change in one’s personal beliefs, and public conformity, which means going along with the group to prevent social conflict.
Participants seemed genuinely to accept the estimate of the group, indicating that they were in agreement with each other. Individual testing was carried out on the participants following the group phase. Sherif found that the group’s influence was still there, and participants’ estimates were nearer to the consensus. This experiment can be classified as an example of private acceptance because when participants were grouped as three, they had a common answer. Even after the experiment, they still stuck to their answer and genuinely believed that what they were thinking, doing, or saying was right.
Asch Line-Judgment Studies
Another experiment for conformity is Asch’s Line-Judgment Studies. In this experiment, the experimenter showed every participant two cards. The first card had one line, and the second card had three lines labeled 1, 2, and 3. The task was simple: each person had to say aloud which of the three comparison lines was the same length as the standard line. The catch was, except for one real participant, all the other participants in the room were confederates who had participated in the experiment and knew the real purpose.
In every trial, participants agreed on which comparison line was the same length as the reference line. But after several trials, things started to change when all of the participants, except one, deliberately gave the wrong answer. When all of the other participants gave the wrong answer, the actual participant started to feel uncomfortable. On average, people conformed on about one-third of the trials on which the accomplices gave an incorrect answer.
It’s a classic normative reason to conform: people go along so they don’t feel strange or foolish.
Revisiting Asch’s Line-Judgment Studies
In Revisiting Asch’s Line-Judgment Studies by Jetten and Hornsey, the authors suggest that Asch’s line-judgment studies are not especially remembered because of resistance; they are remembered because of what they tell us about conformity. The reason for that is that social psychology generally focuses more on what makes people conform than on what makes them dissent and defy while being exposed to peer pressure.
What’s more, we are very fond of and identify with people who oppose conformity pressures and rebel. Until now, we have not even attempted to explain why the majority of participants refused to conform on most trials by concentrating on the minority that did so on some trials. Focusing on conformity rather than dissent also means that group members are understood as passive responders rather than active participants, and uniformity rather than difference is emphasized.
Because of this, theorizing about dissent and the willingness to stand out is relatively underdeveloped, which has prevented us from comprehending how groups (and society at large) change. Asch’s study shows us how important it is for us to fit in and how social disapproval can shape us. As Jetten and Hornsey say, “We can only know reality by agreeing with others about that reality.”