Psychology of Conformity and Resistance in Society

The first research on conformity was conducted in the early nineteen hundreds, and it was brought to the conclusion that conformity is how a person or group changes due to pressure from outside forces; usually other people. It is not necessarily an irrational behaviour, as it is based on a herd-like instinct. The conforming action can, therefore, be divided into rational conformity and irrational conformity. Rational conformity is behavior controlled by rational thought and judgement, while irrational conformity is controlled by instincts, even if they aren’t always right. It can further be divided into generalized and narrow conformity. Narrow conformity means that the individual’s actions or attitudes are consistent with those of the majority. The reason for conformity can derive from both external persuasion and internal factors such as experiences and personal history. Behavior can derive from different factors that turn into a subconscious or conscious reaction. 

Conformity is something that is seen as an external change of someone. Based upon a few studies conducted, four things make up conformity: the cause, the purpose, theoretical assumption, and function. The cause is what is going on around someone, and an uncertain condition enhances the subject’s trust of the the information provided. The purpose is when the unknown condition leads to following the larger social cue, or to do what others are doing. Theoretical assumption follows the purpose, as they will later compare the knee jerk instinct of following the crowd with their reasoning and judgement. The last is function, where the concept of abiding the instinct is classified as reliable. Compliance is a huge factor in conformity, as it is a positive response to something that is asked of someone. Even after thinking through the actions, people might choose to with it even if it does not seem entirely right. Compliance is seen in daily life, often to simply keep a homeostasis is a workplace or home instead of arguing. The most common examples would be doing what your boss tells you to and children listening to their parents when they’re told to do something. The idea is that compliance is commonplace to maintain good relationships. 

Obedience is similar to compliance, but it is defined as taking an order to either avoid being punished or seek awards, like what’s commonly seen in dog training. Abidance, compliance, and obedience are three different presentations of rational conformity (Guandong et al., 2012). These three actions make up what we know as conformity. This leads into a second article about how these traits can lead into conformity even in awful situations such as the Nazi Holocaust. This particular article states that conformity contains two elements: we do awful things because they are determined for us and we become inattentive to the outcomes of our actions when in a group. It’s not that the people had a distinctive trait that made them do inhumane things. 

Muzafer Sherif led one of the first few studies on this matter. He did so by splitting up a group of young boys, who were friends, and then having then compete against each other. As if a switch had flipped, they became rude and violent towards each other. Anyone who had not known them beforehand would have just thought that they were rude young boys when in fact they were perfectly fine and friendly before the study began. After Sherif came Soloman Asch’s experiments. His study showed that if everyone else is ignoring it, so will that individual. The herd-like instinct can be strong enough to override a person’s sense of judgement. 

Stanley Milgram, in a well know psychology study, began with a group of students and when there were no roles set they remained natural obeyed rules with no problems. However when he put a few random students in the roles of guards they became violent towards the rest of the group. The study went downhill so fast that the planned two weeks was cut down to six days after they were worried for the participant’s health and safety. Some question whether group settings is actually what sets people up to be inhumane. It’s not just conformity, as resistance also plays a hand in it. It also takes people resisting against change and against the group. Resistance is a factor that can be found in many studies, yet it tends be ignored. In the study involving the guards, there were actually different categories of guards and they weren’t all violent. 

Yet the conclusion is that it still takes both conformity and resistance to create a situation like what’s seen in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Society has a conformity bias and ignores the resistance that must be involved. Overall, individuals will conform to the ‘normal’ ideals of the groups that they relate with. People that identify as members of a common group (such as people of color or queer people) are going to seek safety in a group that has familiar ideals and act with the group behind them.