Conformity

Conformity is the act of matching one's attitudes, beliefs and behaviors to the norms of a group, whether from an unconscious, predisposed state of mind or from direct social pressure, and it occurs both in small groups and across society at large, and even when a person is alone but still following a shared social norm. The social psychologist Solomon Asch demonstrated the power of conformity in a now-classic laboratory experiment in which a single genuine participant was seated among several confederates instructed to give an obviously incorrect answer to a simple line-judgment task; about a third of participants placed in this position went along with the incorrect majority on the critical trials, and about three-quarters conformed at least once across the full set of trials, even though most, when interviewed afterward, said privately that they had not actually agreed with the group's answer. Researchers distinguish normative influence, conforming out of a desire for social acceptance or fear of rejection, from informational influence, conforming because other people are believed to be better informed in an ambiguous situation, and the psychologist Herbert Kelman further separated conformity into compliance, identification and internalization as three different depths at which a person might adopt a group's position.