Conformity: Social Influence in Psychology

As Bandura (2018) showed, the social influence in psychology is very important to consider because there are essentially three types of agents of social influence that can impact one’s psychology: these agents are peers, groups and media. Peers consist of family and friends or people one sees in person. Groups include school, workplaces, church, organizations, clubs, teams and so on. Media includes social media, films, music, magazines, Internet, etc. The reason people are attentive to social influence is that people have a natural compulsion to want to conform so as to be able to fit in with what their peers or groups (Ciccarelli & White, 2017). Conforming to social norms is something that all people do because of the social nature of their psychology.

The concept of conformity is one that psychologists and social psychologists have long been trying to understand. Conformity is what allows people to be accepted by others. A non-conformist is one who rejects the prevailing norms of a group, peers, or the media. For example, a punk in the 1970s would have been seen as a non-conformist based on his attitudes, ideas, and manner of dress. However, by the end of the decade, punk itself became a group and thus had its own subculture to which people conformed so as to fit in. So one could be a non-conformist in so far as the mainstream cultural norms of society went—but when it came to being a punk one would act the same way, dress the same way and have the same ideas as other punks in the social group: they were simply conforming to the prevailing social norms of that group (Pendry & Carrick, 2001).
Ciccarelli and White (2017) point out that while most people are willing to conform to social norms, there is a danger of doing so, which is that people may embark in groupthink—which is dangerous because it means that people may not take personal responsibility for their own thoughts and actions: instead of thinking about whether what the leaders of the group are saying or what their peers are doing, they will go along with it because they figure that if it were wrong someone else would say something. If everyone in the group is thinking in that manner, then no one will stand up and question whether anything the group is doing is good or bad. This is the primary danger of group think. The example given by Ciccarelli and White (2017) is that in the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush Administration made the decision to invade Iraq based on faulty intelligence. Few people questioned this intelligence because they assumed that if it were wrong someone else would say something or stop the invasion from occurring. It turns out that everyone was engaged in groupthink and as a result a million Iraqis died in the aftermath of the invasion.
Another good example of how conformity and groupthink can be dangerous is the story of the Titanic. Those who built the ship entered into groupthink in terms of imagining like everyone else involved in the project that the ship was unsinkable. So they neglected to put enough lifeboats on the ship to carry all the passengers. When the ship went down many people died because no one had bothered to step out of the groupthink mindset and make the decision to act differently from how everyone else involved in the project was acting.
Criterion used to make the distinction between normal behavior and conforming behavior is based on whether one uses reason or logic to justify one’s behavior or if one is simply behaving out of peer pressure or compulsion to conform to norms and not really out of any sense of personal belief in the values that the group or the peers or the media espouse as normal. For example, a person may move to a new neighborhood and find himself in a new school with new people who all share a particular belief that is racist. The person who has just moved to the neighborhood and is now attending the school recognizes the view as racist and explains to his classmates and teachers why it is racist—but they refuse to see anything wrong in their perspective and beliefs. Instead they turn it around on the new person and accuse the new person of being a trouble maker. Soon the new person feels ostracized and isolated. No one wants to talk to him or be his friend because they feel he is not like them. So in order to be welcomed by the community and to fit in, the person changes his position on the issue of racism and accepts the community’s racist beliefs and attitudes and makes them his own. The person is then accepted with a great sigh of relief: he is like them after all. In this example, the person is demonstrating conforming behavior. His initial response had been normal behavior, as it had proceeded from his own past experiences and learning and could be rationally and reasonably explained. However, because his behavior was at odds with the community’s and he did not want to be isolated, he changed his behavior so as to be more acceptable to the community. He conformed to the community’s social norms and thus stepped away from his normal values, which had informed his behavior throughout his life up till then.
The pressure to conform can be substantially strong especially for young persons who are going through what Erikson describes as the Identity vs. Role Confusion stage of development. This stage lasts through adolescence, or ages 12 to 18. During this stage of development the individual is attempting to define for himself a sense of self—i.e., a sense of identity (Kacerguis & Adams, 1980). However, because he is social and looks to others to understand how he should behave, he can experience role confusion—i.e., trouble seeing how he should fit in or what he should be doing. He may not know what defines him as a person, and he may struggle with having a sense of what values are important to him or how these should shape his life and sense of place. He may have one set of values given him by his family, but media, peers and groups may be recommending an opposite set of values that may contrast sharply with those given by his mother and father. For this reason, the adolescent youngster may experience conflict in the mind and go through a period of what Festinger (1957) called cognitive dissonance.
To resolve feelings of cognitive dissonance, the person will change his perception, change the facts or change his behavior. Changing behavior is can lead to conforming behavior. A young person, for example, may feel ostracized from peers for not smoking marijuana when he has been taught that this is a harmful behavior. However, all his peers at school are smoking it and he feels silly for not joining them. He is caught between two worlds and wants to make friends so he changes his behavior and begins smoking marijuana. He now has friends—but they are not the type of friends his parents want him to have. His desire to conform to social norms has put him in a bad place with his family. Now he feels the cognitive dissonance once more. He is up against the same problem as before, just from the opposite end.
Understanding the issue of conformity can help psychologists, medical doctors and the general public to understand behavior and mental processes because it can allow them to remove the need to judge others. When one is able to empathize and sympathize with one who is making mistakes because of a strong feeling or need to conform, it is easier to help that person get back to normal behavior. The ability to oneself in a young person’s shoes for instance and see how or why young people might get into a mob mentality and engage in groupthink is very important when it comes time to help these young people. They may not be abusing drugs or drinking or engaging in risky sexual behavior because they are bad kids but rather because they think this is what they should be doing since this is what peers and media tell them to do.
The concept of conformity is supported by experiments and correlation research such as those conducted by Bandura (2018) and Festinger (1957). It has been described by Erikson and explained as an issue that adolescents especially face as they go through the challenge of understanding themselves and their place in society. They have to form a sense of self and an identity that is not dependent upon others—peers, groups or media—in order to be able to navigate the world. That identity must be shaped by a sense of values or principles—ideals about what one should be doing with oneself; otherwise the danger for that young person is that he will be like a leaf blowing in the wind, doing whatever those around him are doing and never really being strong enough to do what he knows or feels to be right.
Conformity issues are not just something that young people have to deal with, of course. Everyone has to deal with them. Old and young, male and female—conformity questions are always going to be there for them. However, in many cases conformity is a welcome behavior. For example, when one is converting to a new religion, he is expected to conform to the behaviors that the religious group promotes as being positive. A Catholic convert would be expected to marry in a church, to have children, and to oppose abortion. These are the norms that the conforming behavior seeks to demonstrate.
The knowledge gained in this research can be put to use in my personal life by allowing me to resist judging others and to help them in life decisions by allowing them room to think for themselves. Socrates was the first great teacher who advised against conformity just for the sake of conformity. However, conformity that is based on conviction of ideals is good, so long as the ideals are good and right.


References
Bandura, A. (2018). Toward a psychology of human agency: Pathways and reflections. 
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 130-136.
Ciccarelli, S. & White, N. (2017). Psychology: An Exploration, 4th ed. Pearson.
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance (Vol. 2). Stanford university press.
Kacerguis, M. A., & Adams, G. R. (1980). Erikson stage resolution: The relationship
between identity and intimacy. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 9(2), 117-126.
Pendry, L., & Carrick, R. (2001). Doing what the mob do: Priming effects on
conformity. European Journal of Social Psychology, 31(1), 83-92.