Advantages And Disadvantages Of Normative Conformity

In todays society there is large push behind being unique and finding out who you want to be as an individual. What some don't realize is that depending on certain situations or scenarios we as humans are very good chameleons. We change our attitudes and mentality in a way we feel will have the best result for us, wether it is to feel accepted within a group of new friends or in a job interview with the hiring manager. When people do change it is not a bad necessarily a bad thing, I believe in some circumstances we should act differently for example; the way you talk to your friends vs. the way you treat your boss. The one that bothers me most is when I notice friends or family changing when in a group setting to how they normally would act …show more content…
The change in an individuals belief or behaviour based on social influences.Humans conform for many reasons, in teenagers especially because they are particularly more vulnerable to peer pressure and want to be accepted by their peers. We change who we are for the desire of being liked or accepted by others and will comply within a group to a behaviour or thought that we don't particularly agree with. Solomon Asch (1951,1956) conducted studies exploring the limitations of normative social influence because he believed there are limits to when individuals will conform. In his lab study he used 50 male students from Swarthmore college Students. Using a line judgment task Asch would put one student into a room with seven other accomplices who had agreed in advance to answer incorrectly to 12 of the 18 trials. The real participant did not know of the confederates and was led to believe that the others in the room were also participants, therefore if the participant gave an incorrect answer similar to the accomplices it would be clear that this was due to group pressure. Each person in the room had to state which comparison line was similar to the target line, the participants would always answer last leaving the accomplices to answer incorrectly before to influence the final decision. Contrary to what Asch thought would occur, many of the participants conformed to the incorrect answer. Seventy-six percent of the participants conformed to at least one trial and on average about one-third of the twelve trials on which the accomplice gave an incorrect answer. The cause of the participants conforming was the fear of being incorrect even with a group of strangers. Since the answer was obvious and the participants knew what the right answer was regardless if the group was not choosing the right answer they conformed