Why does conformity occur

These experiments measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. A confederate is someone who is a part of the experiment, but who pretends to be a participant in the study. The participant believed his role was randomly assigned. Milgram experiment setup : Illustration of the setup of a Milgram experiment. The experimenter E convinces the subject T to give what he believes are painful electric shocks to another subject, who is actually an actor L.

Many subjects continued to give shocks despite pleas of mercy from the actors. The participants were instructed that they had to shock a person in another room for every wrong answer on a learning task, and the shocks increased with intensity for each wrong answer.

If participants questioned the procedure, the researcher would encourage them further. At this point, many participants indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the confederate; however, most of them continued after being assured they would not be held responsible. If at any time the participant indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was verbally encouraged to continue.

If the participant still wished to stop after all the verbal prods, the experiment ended. Otherwise, it was only halted after the participant had given the maximum volt shock three times in a row.

Most participants paused and questioned the experiment at some point, but 26 out of 40 still administered the full shock, even after the confederate ceased to respond. These results demonstrate that participants were willing to obey an authority figure and administer extremely harmful and potentially lethal shocks.

The Stanford prison experiment was a study, conducted by Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University in , of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard and. Twenty-four males students were selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoner or guard in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building.

The guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological and physical torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue.

A fraction of the way through the experiment, Zimbardo announced an end to the study. It has been argued that the results of the study demonstrate the impressionability and obedience of people when provided with a legitimizing ideology, along with social and institutional support. The results indicate that environmental factors have a significant affect on behavior. After running these experiments, Milgram and Zimbardo concluded that the following factors affect obedience:.

The Milgram and Zimbardo experiments stand as dramatic demonstrations of the power of authority and other situational factors in human behavior.

While we have learned and continued to learn from their results, they have been endlessly controversial. There is always controversy over exactly how to interpret social psychology experiments. Human behavior is extremely complex, and so there are always numerous variables to consider when interpreting such studies.

But the ethical considerations raised by these studies are even more controversial. Specifically, the subjects were exposed to significant short-term stress, as well as potential long-term trauma. Additionally, neither Milgram nor Zimbardo informed subjects ahead of time of the nature of their participation. Largely as a result of these experiments, ethical standards have been modified to protect participants.

It is generally distinguished from obedience behavior influenced by authority figures and conformity behavior intended to match that of a social majority. The request may be explicit directly stated or implicit subtly implied ; the target may or may not recognize that he or she is being urged to act in a particular way. Compliance affects everyday behavior, especially in social interactions.

Social psychologists view compliance as a means of social influence used to reach goals or attain social or personal gains. In studying compliance, social psychologists aim to examine overt and subtle social influences and their relationship to compliance. Individuals can be coaxed into compliance in a number of ways, which we will discuss next. In addition to these factors, the following techniques have been proven to effectively induce compliance from another party. In using the foot-in-the-door technique, the subject is asked to perform a small request, and after agreeing, a larger request is made.

Because the subject complied with the initial request or requests, he or she is more likely to feel obligated to fulfill additional favors. She says yes, and later he asks if he can stay the night. This technique begins with an initial large request that the subject is not expected to comply with.

The large request is then followed by a second, more reasonable, request. For instance, Jane asks her parents to pay for her vacation to Australia. They flat-out refuse, because it is extremely expensive. The same request made in isolation, however just asking for a trip to New York , would not have been as effective. This technique is frequently employed by car salesmen.

Low-balling gains compliance by offering the subject something at a low initial cost. The cost may be monetary, time related, or anything else that requires something from the individual. After the subject agrees to the initial cost, the requester increases the cost at the last moment.

The subject is more likely to comply with this change in cost since he or she feels like an agreement has already occurred. Low-balling : Low-balling is a tactic frequently used by salesmen.

They will initially quote a deceptively low offer and raise the price dramatically after an informal agreement has taken place but before a contract is signed. For example, before Anna goes to ask for time off from her manager, Anthony, she does a little research and discovers that he enjoys golfing.

When she sees Anthony next time, she starts out talking about her golfing trip last weekend, and later in the conversation she requests time off. Since Anna has now ingratiated herself with Anthony, he is more likely to comply with her request. Many other experiments were also done to show the impacts of conformity. In an experiment done by Peter Reingen the question was whether or not conformity influenced people to agree to donations. People were asked to comply in five different experiments after shown a list of how many other people complied prior to them.

It was concluded that with more false donors on the list that participants were shown, the more likely they were to donate. Stanley Milgram a psychologist from Yale University conducted a conformity experiment as well.

When reading about this, I remembered learning about this particular study in my psychology class in high school. It can be slightly had to describe, but here is a video of the experiment being carried out. Milgram asked a randomized group of people to do what they were told by an authoritarian in the experiment.

There were a total of 3 people in the experiment: the experimenter authoritarian , the person who was obeying the orders, and the person who was receiving what the order was. Even though all of these people were critical, only one of the subject was being tested while the other two were only actors. This however was unknown to the subject being tested. One of the participants was given an electric shock by another participant when trying to learn certain words.

The subject being tested was the one who had to administer the shocks. What they did not know though was there were no shocks actually being given and the learner was just acting like they were in pain as the voltage increased.

Through this experiment, it was shown that most people would actually obey even if it was causing another person pain. Conformity is greatly shown through this because the subject felt he had to go along with whatever he was instructed to do. This ensured that he would not be wrong and could not be punished for not doing the order. Fortunately, this well-known experiment was not a file-drawer problem because Milgram published his findings in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.

Why do people need to conform? All of these experiments show how people conform because of social pressures and the need to fit in. Important factors include:. Examples of influential factors:. Understanding conformity can help you make sense of the reasons why some people go along with the crowd, even when their choices seem out of character for them.

It can also help you see how other people's behavior may influence the choices you make. Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Breckler, S.

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