When is conformity a good thing

Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Conformity involves changing your behaviors in order to "fit in" or "go along" with the people around you. In some cases, this social influence might involve agreeing with or acting like the majority of people in a specific group, or it might involve behaving in a particular way in order to be perceived as "normal" by the group.

Psychologists have proposed a variety of definitions to encompass the social influence that conformity exerts. Some other definitions include:. Researchers have found that people conform to a number of different reasons. Other people might have greater knowledge or experience than we do, so following their lead can actually be instructive.

In some instances, we conform to the expectations of the group in order to avoid looking foolish. This tendency can become particularly strong in situations where we are not quite sure how to act or where the expectations are ambiguous. In , Deutsch and Gerard identified two key reasons why people conform: informational influence and normative influence. Informational influence happens when people change their behavior in order to be correct. In a classroom setting, for example, this might involve agreeing with the judgments of another classmate who you perceive as being highly intelligent.

Normative influence stems from a desire to avoid punishments such as going along with the rules in class even though you don't agree with them and gain rewards such as behaving in a certain way in order to get people to like you. As mentioned previously, normative and informational influences are two important types of conformity, but there are also a number of other reasons why we conform.

The following are some of the major types of conformity. Conformity is something that happens regularly in our social worlds. Sometimes we are aware of our behavior, but in many cases, it happens without much thought or awareness on our parts. UBC News. Majority rule: why conformity can actually be a good thing Jul 28, For more information, contact Glenn Drexhage.

Michael Muthukrishna. UBC offers several electronic news services available in a variety of formats. Federal court system, many important cases go through three-judge panels.

The majority opinion of these panels carries the day, meaning that having a majority is crucial for one side or another to get the rulings they want. But a study of the judicial behavior of the District of Columbia Circuit came to a surprising conclusion: A panel of three GOP-appointed judges was actually considerably more likely to make a conservative ruling than a panel of two GOP appointees and one Democratic appointee. Just one Democratic dissenter appeared to make the difference; the dissenter apparently swayed their colleagues, demonstrating how viewpoint diversity has the power to alter the conclusions of a group.

This court study is among many cited by legal scholar Cass Sunstein in his new book Conformity: The Power of Social Influences , which delves deeply into how and why individuals often follow the opinions and behaviors of groups they belong to. On the contrary, he reiterates numerous circumstances when society can benefit from it. For instance, Sunstein notes how conformity helped encourage public smoking laws.

One study found that when public smoking bans were enacted in three California cities, compliance was high, and the cities received few reports of violations. And if most people think it is wrong to smoke in public places, would-be smokers are less likely to smoke, in part because they do not want to be criticized or reprimanded.

But conformity also carries with it the power to make human beings ignore their own consciences, sometimes to the point of committing atrocities.

Milgram found that all of the participants were willing to shock the confederate at volts, and two-thirds continued to administer shocks at the very highest level of voltage. The participants were simply willing to trust the instructor that what they were doing was okay. Why do we not conform? What are the 3 types of conformity? When can conformity be a good thing? What is meant by informational social influence? What is an example of informational influence?

What are the factors that affect conformity? How does influence affect decision making? What are the two main reasons for the effects of social influence? How does the view of others affect decision making? How does family influence your decision making? How Does past experience affect decision making? Do past experiences affect your life? How do you influence decision making?