Your best friends invite you to a music festival with their favorite artists. After looking through the lineup, you realize you are not familiar with the artists playing. You proceed to listen to their songs, and can’t help but notice you aren’t a fan of this genre of music. Despite your concerns, you convince yourself it’s not bad. In fact, you tell yourself, “it’s pretty good!” You don’t want to be left out. Ultimately, you conform and buy a ticket and join your friends at the festival. Show
Conformity refers to an individual aligning their behavior, perception, or opinion with those of another person or group.1 An individual may consciously or unconsciously act in a certain way due to influence from others. We have a natural tendency to unconsciously mirror the behaviors of those we interact with, such as language, gestures, and talking speed.2 Researchers say that mimicking individuals subconsciously do can increase our connection to those we interact with, allowing interactions to flow more effortlessly.3 There are two main explanations provided by social psychology for conformity1:
Part of the prevalence of conformity in human behavior can be explained by reinforcement learning.1 Being liked or accepted by a certain group is, in itself, a reward. Muzafer Sherif, a Turkish-American social psychologist, was an early contributor to the idea of conformity. Sherif designed an experiment which involved participants being placed in a dark room, where they would stare at a dot of light. Despite the dot never moving, due to an illusion known as the autokinetic effect it would appear to shift. Participants were asked to estimate the amount the light moved. They shared their estimates out loud. Repeated trials found that each group of three participants converged towards an estimate.4 Sherif’s results, published in 1935, highlighted the way that different groups converged towards their respective estimates, which occurred naturally without any discussion or prompts. When the groups returned one week later to perform the same test individually, they repeated their groups’ converged estimates. Sherif concluded the participants had adopted their respective groups’ way of thinking.4 This experiment provided early evidence on the social effects of individuals’ perceptions. Building on the significance of Sherif’s 1935 study, Solomon Asch designed a modified version of Sherif’s experiment. Asch, a Polish-American social psychologist, argued Sherif’s experiment had a key problem: researchers could not be absolutely sure the participants had conformed, especially when there was no correct answer to Sherif’s ambiguous experiment.5  The line judgement task in Solomon Asch’s 1951 experiment. Asch proceeded to design his now-famous line experiment. Participants were shown a target line, and then asked to choose one of three lines which most closely resembled the target. When participants performed the task individually, they chose the correct answer almost all the time. However, when placed in a room of actors, who were told beforehand to choose an incorrect answer, roughly 75% of participants conformed at least once by choosing a clearly incorrect answer. Only an approximate 25% of participants never conformed.6 When asked, most participants who conformed said that even though they did not believe they were selecting the correct response, they did so out of fear of being ridiculed. Some conforming participants believed they were choosing the correct response.6 Following these experiments, a 1958 publication by Harvard Professor of Social Ethics, Herbert Kelman, formally described three main types of conformity:7
Kelman’s articulation of three distinct types of conformity were highly influential in social psychology. Social psychology research today has streamlined Kelman’s ideas into the two types of conformity, informational and normative, explained above. Some individuals may say conformity is undesirable, as it prevents individuals from expressing themselves. However, conformity is not inherently positive or negative. Returning your shopping cart, not picking your nose in public, and acting respectful at a funeral can all be considered acts of conformity. On the road, respecting lane etiquette is an act of conformity that contributes to a society with fewer driving accidents. Nevertheless, conformity to social pressure in a group setting can also have adverse effects which lead to groupthink. When people prioritize cohesion and agreement in a group, decisions may be reached without critical evaluation of the consequences. Though there are many other factors that contribute to groupthink, normative conformity can cause groupthink if individuals are afraid their ideas would be rejected. Informational conformity can also cause groupthink when individuals who falsely perceive group members to be more intelligent and thus conform to their ideas without the necessary critical evaluation.13 Another point of controversy around conformity is whether its prevalence is that much more common than the prevalence of deviance. Some researchers argue deviance is as prevalent as conformity and suggest the appearance of deviance appearance is minimized.10 Though Solomon Asch’s line judgement task is considered as a classic piece of evidence supporting conformity, an often overlooked finding is the frequency in which a lone participant continued telling the truth in the midst of incorrect responses by the research actors. Researchers argue Asch’s publication, considered a classic example of evidence that supports conformity, should also be used to support the idea that individuals often do not conform.11 There are important factors which can influence an individual’s desire to not give in to social pressures. Though oversimplified, cultural patterns can explain why some individuals prefer not to conform. Individualistic cultures tend to prefer being different from the group. This culture values independence and self-sufficiency, prioritizing the needs of themselves over those of the group. In contrast, collectivist cultures are generally more likely to conform as this culture prioritizes the needs of family and friends before their own.12 What is the purpose of autokinetic effect?Description. The autokinetic effect (also referred to as autokinesis) is a phenomenon of visual perception in which a stationary, small point of light in an otherwise dark or featureless environment appears to move. It presumably occurs because motion perception is always relative to some reference point.
Why did Sherif choose the autokinetic effect to study social conformity?Why did Sherif study the autokinetic effect? Realizing that an experience that is completely "in people's heads" might be readily influenced by suggestion, Sherif decided to study how people were influenced by other people's opinions, in their perception of the autokinetic effect.
What was the finding of Sherif's study 1936 on conformity when participants were asked to estimate the distance moved by a point of light?Sherif found that although each participant who was tested alone made estimates that were within a relatively narrow range (as if they had their own “individual” norm), there were wide variations in the size of these judgments among the different participants he studied.
What is the autokinetic effect social psychology?autokinetic effect, illusory movement of a single still object, usually a stationary pinpoint of light used in psychology experiments in dark rooms. As one stares at a fixed point of light, one's eye muscles become fatigued, causing a slight eye movement.
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