CONFORMITY AND OBEDIENCE

Conformity and Obedience in Real World

Conformity and Obedience in Real World

Introduction

Conformity and obedience are two popular human behaviours which has always been the focus of attention for social psychologists. Though the classic experiments of Sherif, Milgram and Asch present extensive findings regarding the human behaviours structured around conformity and obedience, it becomes really important to validate that whether the traditional concepts about conformity and obedience can be replicated today or the sophisticated social roles have overwhelmed an individual's responsiveness towards his surroundings. It is very important to explore that what is a human's actual and reported approach towards conformity and obedience in the present era and what modifications have altered the foundation of conformity and obedience.

Discussion

Conformity

Aronson has given a very comprehensive definition of conformity as 'a change in a person's behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people” (Aronson et.al, 2007, p78). Crutchfield (1955) defines conformity simply as “yielding to group pressures(Weiten, 2012, p546) .Conformity is basically a sort of social influence that involves a change in behaviours, beliefs and attitudes of individual in order to comply with the group norms or to fit in the group actually(Sherif, 1936, p37). This behavioural change can be an active response to the real pressure exerted by the group involving their physical presence or to the imagined group pressure resulting from the pressure exerted by social norms and group attributes (Bleske-Rechek, 2001, p260). Group pressure can be of various forms ranging from criticism, bullying, teasing and persuasion.

Sherif's experiment on autokinetic effect, which was based on an optical illusion, is the most classis and widely referred experiment on conformity. In his experiment, he placed his subjects in a dark room and made them observe a pinprick of light for a certain time. This caused the people delude that the light was moving erratically (Sherif, 1936, p40). Then, Sherif inquired from related people about their estimates regarding the movement of light on multiple trials. The estimated responses of individuals were completely individual-centred. But when the same question was asked from people in groups, the people's responses were highly typical to the entire group and they remained consistent with the group norms when the individuals were asked alone again (Sherif, 1936, p45).

According to Sherif (1936, p38), there are mainly three types of conformity. First one is normative conformity which involves an individual responding to group pressure in order to satisfy his desire of fitting himself within the group because he is afraid of being rejected by the relative group. The normative conformity typically revolves around compliance in which a person apparently accepts the group norms but rejects them privately. The second type of conformity is informational conformity in which an individual lacks necessary knowledge and information so he looks to the group for deciding the appropriate response or he is in a ambiguous situation so he compares his behaviour socially with the group or when a person is in an ambiguous situation and ...