Conformity

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Ricco Bell

Sociology 1301

Tuesday & Thursday 12:30-2pm

Professor Anthony Pearson

Ricco Bell                                                                                        Bell 2

Anthony Pearson

Sociology 1306

20 October 2014

Group conformity is essentially following the majority's desires or standards. Group Conformity is often called peer pressure in that peer pressure is the most common type of group conformity. Group conformity can be seen in most every instance in life from a standing ovation after a poor concert performance to high school peer pressure to do drugs. There are two main types of group conformities, “Normative” and “Informational” conformity, both of which will be discussed later in the essay. First and foremost we will begin with Group conformity.

 Group conformity is type of social influence that results in a change of behavior or belief in order to fit in with a group. In my opinion group conformity is seen more and more throughout the United States in minority groups. In the United States group conformity is most evident in the idiocracy of sagging in that children see all of the “older kids” sagging and do the same in order to “fit in” entailing that more people are doing out of conformity in that the it’s cool. Conformity demonstrates the power of social influence over each individual’s life, such as a person picking an obviously incorrect answer to a problem simply because the rest of the group unanimously picked the wrong answer as demonstrated by Solomon Asch in his 1951 conformity experiments. In the Asch Experiments approximately 25% of the participants conformed most of the time, and an additional 50% of the participants conformed at least once.

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That means that only 25% never conformed. If this evidence reflects within the global population then it may be concluded that 75% of the population may have their opinions swayed by group conformity. When a person submits to conformity it is considered “Fusion of identity” which is when a person becomes fused within a group, and their personal and social identities become functionally equivalent. In my opinion Group Conformity yields primarily negative consequences.