Inquiry Final Draft

“He who marches joyfully to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice” – Albert Einstein (Calaprice) . Humans are complex organisms, most notably for our abilities of critical thought and use of dynamic language. In the midst of human complexities lies a need to belong. Since we have come into existence, humans have clung to each other, finding strength in numbers against the environment. Over time, humans have applied this strategy to social situations, resulting in conformity. We change our behavior in order to cohere to certain groups, listening to certain music, wearing certain clothes, and professing various ideologies. There are divergent theories that aim to answer why humans conform socially. Some trace the behavior to our need of cooperation for survival, while some claim that we have an emotional or egotistical need to belong to a group. Nonetheless, conformity is abundant, and it affects every one of us. Chances are, every human on Earth conforms in some way, shape, or form, at least on the most miniscule of levels. The only testable and observable aspect of conformity is the outward change in behavior; a person may argue for republicans in front of his conservative grandmother, while claiming agreement with democrats in front of his friends; in his subconscious, does that person agree with republican or democrat ideology? What cannot be observed are the internal beliefs of individuals who conform. There is no empirical way to determine whether people change at the core in order to blend in or if people simply change their actions to be acceptable. Although it cannot be proven with current technology, it is more reasonable to assume that people cannot be changed all the way through by social pressure, and that humans simply modify their behavior to avoid the hammers of society.

            In social psychology, conformity is defined as “changing behavior in accordance with socially accepted conventions or standards”, and can my put simply as “yielding to group pressure” (McLeod, “What is Conformity?”). There are three types of conformity currently accepted in social psychology, and they are compliance, internalization, and identification. Compliance is changing one’s actions to satisfy social norms, while disagreeing consciously. Internalization is the idea that a person can change behavior and change internal beliefs in the process. Identification is adhering to the accepted attributes of a social role; having the role of power has been shown to make people belittle the people around them (Kelman, 51). Mann later described conformity in three categories: normative conformity, informational conformity, and ingratiational conformity. Normative conformity is when a person changes his actions in order to fit into a group. The change is fueled by a fear of rejection, and is comparable to compliance, in which the person affected harbors discord in his subconscious. Informational conformity occurs when a person uses the general opinion of a group to make a decision he is uncertain about, using the group’s ideology as a compass. Informational conformity can be said to lead to internalization, because the person in question takes the group’s opinion and makes it his own. Ingratiational conformity is when an individual alters his actions in order to get ahead by means of social networking or favors (Mann, “Social Psychology”). This is fueled by the need for something, rather than the need to actually belong to the group. It can be said, then, that ingratiational conformity is also a form of compliance, since people who succumb to it do not falter in their beliefs.

            If internal change is impossible, then the ideas of internalization and informational conformity must contain fallacies. As Mann defined it, informational conformity is when an individual looks to the opinion of a group in order to make decisions he is uncertain about. The problem with this is that in informational conformity, the person in question has no opinion beforehand because he is uncertain; there is nothing to be changed. If there is nothing to be changed, then the behavior cannot be deemed conformity because conformity, by definition, is the change in behavior or belief to fit in with a group. An experiment was conducted in 1935 that demonstrated what social psychologists would call internalization or informational conformity. In the experiment, a point of light was shown onto a dark wall. To a human, the point of light will appear to move, due to an optical illusion. Test subjects were brought into the room individually and asked how far the light appeared to move, and the estimates varied greatly. The subjects were then tested in groups of three. Researchers manipulated the groups, placing people in groups such that two people from each group had similar previous estimates, and one person had a very different previous estimate. When asked aloud how far the light moved, two group members gave estimates similar to their previous estimates, but the other subject, whose original estimate was different, changed his estimate to be closer to the other two. This process was repeated with similar results (Sherif). The conclusion was that people tend to conform in ambiguous situations. In this example, the subjects are unsure of how far the light traveled because the light did not actually travel around the board. Since the visual evidence of movement was unclear, the next source of evidence was the input of the other subject. Since the subjects held no firm belief in the extent of the movement, there was nothing internal to be changed. This sort of behavior could be seen as a parallel to cheating on a test. The person cheating doesn’t know the answer to a question, and so he copies the answer of another. Copying the answer does not signify belief in that answer; it simply demonstrates the need for an answer. The subjects in the experiment simply cheated off one another, without internalizing any belief. If this is true, then conformity is restricted to only compliance and identification, which are defined as merely demonstrating external change. This would rule out the possibility of internal conformity.

            While internal conformity has been accepted for over 60 years, it seems to have been conceived with a skewed definition of conformity. People modify their behavior to fit into groups, that is certain, but the notion that people change at the core due to peer pressure seems unreasonable. From what has been discussed, people can acquire knowledge from one another, but this is not the same as internal conformity, because there is no previous behavior to be modified. It seems more logical to believe that people are aware of their divergent beliefs when they conform, and that change is only on the outside.

           

Literature Cited

Einstein, Albert, and Alice Calaprice. The Expanded Quotable Einstein. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. Print.

McLeod, Saul. "What is Conformity?." Simply Psychology. N.p., 2007. Web. 2 Dec. 2012. <http://www.simplypsychology.org/conformity.html>.

Kelman, Herbert C. "Compliance, identification, and internalization: Three processes of attitude change." The Journal of Conflict Resolution 2.1 (1958): 51-60.

Mann, L. Social Psychology. New York: Wiley. (1969)

Sherif, Muzafer. "A study of some social factors in perception." Archives of Psychology (Columbia University); Archives of Psychology (Columbia University) (1935).