Types of Conformity

Think about the last time you changed your behaviour to fit in with a group - you were experiencing conformity, which is simply adjusting what you do, think or say because of pressure from others. It's completely normal and happens to everyone, but psychologists have identified three different levels of how deeply this affects you.

Compliance is the weakest form - you go along with the group publicly but privately disagree. Picture agreeing with your mates about a film being brilliant when you actually thought it was rubbish. You're just avoiding conflict or trying to fit in, and you'll probably go back to your real opinion when you're alone.

Identification goes deeper - you genuinely want to belong to a particular group, so you adopt their attitudes and behaviours both publicly and privately. However, this usually fades when you leave the group. Think about how you might change your style or opinions when you join a new club or friendship group.

Internalisation is the strongest type, sometimes called 'true conformity'. Here, you genuinely believe the group is right and permanently change your views. This sticks with you regardless of whether the group is around or not.

💡 Quick Check: Next time you find yourself agreeing with a group, ask yourself - am I just being polite (compliance), trying to fit in (identification), or do I genuinely believe this (internalisation)?

Why We Conform: The Two Main Reasons

Understanding why people conform comes down to two key motivations that drive most of our social behaviour. These explanations help make sense of when and why we're most likely to give in to group pressure.

Normative Social Influence (NSI) is all about wanting to be liked and accepted. You conform because you're worried about being rejected, ridiculed, or left out. This doesn't mean you actually agree with the group - you're just prioritising social acceptance over your own opinion. It's the reason you might laugh at jokes you don't find funny or pretend to like music you actually hate.

Informational Social Influence (ISI) happens when you're genuinely unsure about what's right or correct. You look to the majority group for guidance because you assume they know something you don't. This type of conformity is stronger when tasks are difficult or ambiguous - if everyone else seems confident about an answer, you're likely to trust their judgement.

Asch's research showed that task difficulty significantly affects conformity levels. When he made his famous line-length experiment harder by making the lines more similar, people conformed more often. Lucas (2006) found that confident individuals were less likely to conform even when tasks were difficult, showing that both situational factors and individual differences matter.

💡 Remember: NSI = wanting to be liked, ISI = wanting to be right. Most conformity situations involve a mix of both motivations.

What Affects How Much We Conform

Several key factors determine whether you'll conform to group pressure, and understanding these can help you recognise when you're most vulnerable to social influence. Asch's groundbreaking experiments revealed exactly what makes conformity more or less likely.

Group size matters, but only up to a point. Asch found that conformity was minimal with just one or two people pressuring you, but jumped dramatically to 30% with three people. However, adding more people beyond three didn't increase conformity rates much further - so there's an optimal group size for maximum influence.

Unanimity is absolutely crucial. When everyone in the group agrees, conformity rates stay high. But as soon as just one person breaks ranks and disagrees with the majority, conformity drops massively - from 32% to just 5.5% in Asch's studies. Interestingly, it doesn't matter if this 'rebel' supports your view or not; simply breaking the group's consensus is enough to reduce pressure.

The research even extends beyond humans - Pike and Laland found that stickleback fish show similar conformity patterns when choosing feeding sites. This suggests conformity might have evolutionary survival value, helping species make safer choices by following successful group behaviours.

💡 Key Insight: You're most likely to conform when facing a group of 3+ people who all agree. If even one person dissents, you'll find it much easier to stick to your own opinion.

Task Difficulty and the Stanford Prison Experiment

Task difficulty significantly increases conformity because when answers aren't obvious, we naturally look to others for guidance. Asch proved this by making his line comparisons more similar - suddenly, participants were much more likely to conform to wrong answers because they genuinely doubted themselves.

Zimbardo's famous Stanford Prison Experiment tackled a different but related question: why are prisons so brutal and violent? His research aimed to test two competing explanations for prison violence that are relevant to understanding social influence more broadly.

The dispositional hypothesis suggests that prisoners and guards are simply 'bad people' - prisoners lack respect for law and order, while guards are naturally domineering and aggressive. This 'bad apple' theory places responsibility on individual personality traits and character flaws.

The situational hypothesis argues that anyone would behave brutally in the same environmental conditions. According to this view, it's not about being a bad person - the prison environment itself creates the problematic behaviours we observe.

💡 Think About It: This debate between dispositional vs situational factors applies everywhere - from school bullying to workplace behaviour. Are people naturally good or bad, or do situations shape how we act?

Milgram's Obedience Experiments

Milgram's research into obedience was inspired by Nazi war criminals who claimed they were 'just following orders' during the Nuremberg trials. His shocking experiments revealed how ordinary people can commit terrible acts when instructed by authority figures.

The basic setup involved participants thinking they were testing learning by giving electric shocks to another person (actually an actor) every time they got an answer wrong. Despite hearing screams and pleas to stop, 65% of participants delivered what they believed were potentially lethal 450-volt shocks simply because a researcher in a lab coat told them to continue.

Ethical concerns were massive. Participants showed extreme stress reactions - three even had seizures during the experiment. Milgram's membership of the American Psychological Association was temporarily suspended, though he eventually won awards for the research.

However, follow-up studies showed minimal long-term damage. Only 2% regretted participating, and 74% felt they'd learned something valuable about themselves. Psychiatric assessments a year later found no lasting psychological harm, suggesting the short-term distress was outweighed by the study's important insights about human behaviour.

💡 Ethical Dilemma: Should researchers cause short-term distress to participants if it reveals crucial insights about human nature? This cost-benefit analysis remains controversial today.

Criticisms of Milgram's Research

Several important criticisms challenge the validity and generalisability of Milgram's findings. Understanding these limitations helps you evaluate the research more critically and consider how it applies to real-world situations.

Internal validity questions whether participants actually believed the shocks were real. Orne and Holland argued that people only delivered shocks because they knew it was fake. However, 75% of participants said they believed the shocks were genuine, and their extreme physical reactions suggest they weren't just acting.

Androcentrism is a major issue since only males participated. Many assume women would be less obedient, but research suggests the opposite. Sheridan and King found that when giving real (but mild) shocks to a puppy, 54% of men but 100% of women obeyed up to the maximum level - suggesting Milgram's results might actually underestimate obedience rates.

Cultural bias affects generalisability since only Americans were tested. Subsequent research found massive cultural differences: Spanish participants showed 90% obedience (the highest ever recorded), while Australians showed only 28% - possibly reflecting their traditionally anti-authoritarian culture.

💡 Critical Thinking: When evaluating any psychological research, always ask - who was studied, when was it conducted, and how might this affect whether the findings apply to you and your culture?

Cultural and Historical Validity Issues

The cultural differences in obedience rates across countries reveal how social context shapes our willingness to follow authority. These variations aren't random - they reflect deeply embedded cultural attitudes about power, authority, and individual responsibility.

Cultural attitudes towards authority explain much of this variation. Australians' low obedience rate (28%) aligns with their historically anti-authoritarian culture, while Germany showed relatively high rates (80%), and Spain recorded the highest at 90%. These patterns suggest that your cultural background significantly influences how likely you are to obey questionable orders.

Historical validity concerns whether Milgram's 1960s findings still apply today. Critics argued that American culture was particularly authoritarian during the early 1960s, making people more obedient than they would be now. However, Burger's 2009 replication found similar obedience levels, suggesting these tendencies persist across generations.

The consistency of these findings across decades is both reassuring and concerning. While it validates Milgram's original research, it also suggests that our susceptibility to destructive obedience hasn't diminished much despite increased awareness of these psychological processes.

💡 Global Perspective: Your cultural background shapes how you respond to authority. Understanding these differences helps explain why people from different cultures might react differently to the same authority figure.

The Agentic State Theory

Milgram's agency theory explains why ordinary people can commit terrible acts when following orders. The key insight is that we learn from childhood that obedience to rules keeps society stable, but this comes at the cost of some personal responsibility.

When you're in an autonomous state, you act according to your own wishes and feel personally responsible for your actions. You're making independent decisions based on your own moral code and values.

However, when obeying an authority figure, you shift into an agentic state - essentially becoming an agent of the person giving orders. In this state, you see the authority figure as responsible for the consequences of your actions, not yourself. This psychological shift allows people to act against their moral beliefs because they don't feel personally accountable.

Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi responsible for organising mass exterminations, exemplified this mindset with his defence that he was 'only following orders'. The agency theory suggests he genuinely saw himself as not responsible for the genocide he helped orchestrate.

This de-individualisation process helps explain how hierarchical systems can produce destructive obedience. When clear authority structures exist, people naturally slip into the agentic state and may follow orders that they would never independently choose to carry out.

💡 Real-World Application: Notice when you feel less responsible for your actions because someone in authority told you what to do - this is the agentic state in action.

Evidence and Legitimacy of Authority

Research strongly supports the agentic state theory through Milgram's observations. Many participants showed clear moral strain during debriefing, admitting they knew their actions were wrong. Yet they continued obeying, suggesting they felt the researcher, not themselves, was responsible for any harm caused.

The 'remote authority' variation provided crucial evidence. When the researcher gave orders by phone rather than in person, obedience dropped dramatically from 62.5% to just 20.5%. This suggests that physical presence of authority figures helps maintain the agentic state, while distance allows people to shift back to autonomous decision-making.

Legitimacy of authority explains why we obey certain people but not others. We're socialised from early childhood to recognise authority figures as having the right to give orders. Parent-child, teacher-student, and boss-employee relationships all teach us that those higher in social hierarchies should be obeyed.

This acceptance of legitimate authority helps maintain social stability, but it can also lead to destructive obedience. Milgram noted that some participants completely ignored the learner's distress and focused purely on following the experimental procedure correctly - they were 'doing their duty' to the legitimate authority figure.

💡 Recognition: We automatically respect certain authority figures based on their role, uniform, or position. This isn't necessarily bad, but being aware of it helps you make more conscious choices about when to obey.

The Authoritarian Personality

The authoritarian personality offers a dispositional explanation for why some people are more obedient than others. This personality type, first described by Fromm and later studied extensively by Adorno, involves rigid beliefs, intolerance of ambiguity, submission to authority, and hostility toward those of lower status.

Adorno's research with 2,000 white middle-class Americans revealed that people with authoritarian personalities have deep insecurities that make them hostile to unconventional people. They believe strongly in power and toughness, leading to high obedience to authority figures.

The F-scale questionnaire measures authoritarian tendencies across nine personality dimensions. High scorers identify with 'strong' people, think in black-and-white terms without grey areas, hold fixed stereotypes about other groups, and show strong correlations between authoritarianism and prejudice.

Childhood influences are crucial - authoritarian personalities typically develop from hierarchical, strict parenting styles. Jost suggests this personality type is motivated by a desire to reduce anxiety about social change, with strict obedience to authority seen as preventing disruptive changes.

Supporting research includes Elms and Milgram's finding that highly obedient participants in the original experiment scored significantly higher on the F-scale than disobedient ones. Altemeyer found that authoritarian personalities even gave themselves higher electric shocks when ordered to do so.

💡 Self-Reflection: Consider your own tolerance for ambiguity and attitudes toward authority. These personality traits can influence how susceptible you are to social pressure and obedience.