Picture this: you’re standing in front of an elevator. You send a text message, putting your phone away once you hear the familiar ding! The low creak of doors sliding open follows. You look up, ready to step inside, but—
Everyone is facing the back of the elevator.
Okay, you think. This is weird.
What do you do? Get in the elevator like normal, becoming the only person to face the front? Or do you get the elevator and face the back, like everyone else?
I don’t know about you, but I think I’d face the back! After all, most of us aren’t particularly keen on sticking out like a sore thumb. If you agree that you’d do the same, fear not: for better or worse, to conform is human, and everyone else who participated in this Candid Camera TV experiment also found themselves facing the back of the elevator to avoid standing out from the crowd.
I’ve talked about conformity before on this blog, such as when I explored three tips to manage conformity bias. But today, we’re going to delve further into six types of conformity and how they affect us, because we often don’t realize how many ways the world encourages us to conform! Shall we begin?
1. Imitation
When I took my first sales course early in my career, my instructor taught us about something called “mirroring.” They explained that to more effectively connect with a potential client, we should be intentional about moving our body to parallel their movements. To do so would increase the trust between ourselves and the client; after all, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
Allow me to be honest: after my instructor finished explaining, I still did not understand the significance of this technique. That is, until I bought my first car. As I discussed the merits of the vehicle with the salesperson, I noticed that they were imitating my behavior! If I shifted my weight from my right to my left foot, they did the same. If I gestured outward, they copied the gesture, too! The salesperson was utilizing a type of conformity we simply call imitation, or the mimicking of body language, in order to connect with me and increase the likelihood of me buying their car. Pretty strategic, huh? Next time you’re preparing to make a big purchase, watch closely! Your salesperson might imitate you, too.
2. Informational Conformity
Today is the big day—in T-minus two hours, you have the interview for your dream job. There’s only one problem: what should you wear? When in doubt, your best friend has your back. You call them up and they immediately recommend the perfect get-up, allowing you to look professional while feeling totally comfortable.
This inclination to trust someone who we believe has accurate information on a subject is known as informational conformity. We trust our friend’s recommendation about what to wear for the interview because we believe their taste and assessment of our style to be accurate. Wearing their chosen outfit becomes “the right thing to do.” As this example demonstrates, informational conformity isn’t inherently a bad thing. It usually refers to a person lacking knowledge or certainty on a particular subject, therefore they look to an individual or group for guidance. Of course, it’s important to remember that a bit of skepticism is also healthy. When we’re at the doctor, informational conformity tells us to trust their expertise when they diagnose us, and that we should therefore conform to their advice. But if we still feel something isn’t right, it is better to push back against that instinct for conformity and instead voice our concerns! While there’s no shame in trusting others, we must trust ourselves, too.
3. Normative Conformity
You’re at a work function to celebrate the successful establishment of a partnership between your organization and another business. Everyone is laughing and chatting, glasses of champagne and wine in hand. When a server comes over to offer yourself and your friend a drink, you take one with a nod and cheerful thanks. Your friend accepts a drink, too, though more slowly.
After a while, you notice that your friend has hardly sipped from their glass.
“Are you okay?” you ask, concerned.
“Hm?”
“Your drink.”
They glance down at their glass. “Oh. Yeah, wine isn’t really my thing.”
You tilt your head in confusion. “Then why’d you get a glass?”
Your friend hesitates, then shrugs. “Everyone else was drinking. It’d be weird if I wasn’t, wouldn’t it?”
This example demonstrates a type of conformity many of us are familiar with: normative conformity. Normative conformity might also be described as conforming to social norms, typically for fear of rejection or exclusion from a group. The above example is unconscious, where the friend was not forced to drink, but simply felt pressured to because their coworkers all were. More serious instances of normative conformity can be classified as peer pressure, where there is an articulated threat or warning against a person to conform, or else. It’s therefore worth noting that normative conformity can certainly be dangerous, such as people becoming regular smokers after they started smoking to “fit in,” not because they truly wanted to smoke.
4. Majority Influence (Compliance)
Exciting news: today you are participating in an experiment! You and a group of individuals are taken into a plain room, where you are sat down in a semicircle before a board. The facilitator explains that you will be shown a line on one card, and your task is to decide which line on a second card is the same length. Ready? Here are the cards:
The correct answer is unmistakably Line 1, you decide. Unfortunately, you’re the final chair in the semicircle, so you will be last to report your response. The facilitator points at the first participant.
“Line 2,” they say, confidently.
You blink. What?
The next participant: “Line 2.”
Okay, now you’re getting concerned. It’s Line 1, isn’t it?
“Line 2,” the third participant says, and so do all the rest until it is finally your turn to speak.
Maybe… Maybe it isn’t Line 1?
If you choose to say Line 2, don’t feel bad! What I have just described here is the Asch experiment, originally conducted in the 1950s. The original results: 76% of the 123 participants gave at least one incorrect response when it was their turn; overall, 37% of responses were wholly conforming. This experiment thus demonstrates the power of majority influence, a type of conformity we might also describe as compliance. In other words, we conform to the opinion of the majority publicly, though we might disagree with them privately, because their sheer number means a) we don’t want to challenge them and b) we wonder if they are actually correct. But what’s the importance of this conformity outside of lines and experiments?
The answer is obvious but important: every time we walk out the door, our opinions are shaped by those of the majority. Be it fashion trends seen as we scroll through Instagram or politics blaring at us from TV, the more we see something repeated, the more we may come to question any dissenting opinions we hold. This herd mentality is risky, as it can suppress diversity of thought and reinforce oppressive ideals. But much like normative conformity, awareness is key to challenging the power of majority influence: knowing that we’re susceptible to majority influence allows us to catch ourselves before falling in too deep. And like informational conformity, too, it is also crucial to trust ourselves! When we find ourselves doing something because everyone else is doing it, we must learn to stop and ask, Is this something I want to do? Is this something I am comfortable with? And if the answer is No, trust your gut!
5. Minority Influence
Let’s dive into another study! You and five others are sitting in a room. You’ve all been instructed to identify the color of a slide before you. Going around the circle, there is consistency: you and three other participants echo the same sentiment that this slide is blue. But what’s an experiment without a little disruption?
Participant 5 shakes their head. “No, it’s green.”
Participant 6 confirms: “Definitely green.”
You and the other participants brush them off. Four of you against two of them—the majority must be in the right.
But Participants 5 and 6 keep at it. New slides are shown, all the same blue, but Participants 5 and 6 insist they’re green. Eventually, you exchange a glance with Participant 3 on your left. Could… Could it be green after all?
What I’ve just described here is a simplified version of an experiment by social scientist Serge Moscovici that examined a type of conformity known as minority influence. How can this be? you may be wondering. How can there be both majority and minority influence? Think of it this way: majority influence relates to the size of the majority, where their overwhelming scale causes us to reason that if everyone else is thinking or doing a certain thing, they must be right. With minority influence, it is the unanimity and consistency of the minority that allows them to influence the opinion of the majority. Although the experiment I have described shows minority influence in a more staged manner, minority influence is crucial to maintaining diversity of thought in our world. It’d be pretty boring if we all behaved exactly the same all the time, wouldn’t it? Hence why it is important for us to listen to opinions that differ from our own, especially if those opinions are ones that challenge the accepted status quo. In short, the power of the minority encourages creativity and facilitates social change!
6. Obedience
“Obedience”? What’s obedience doing on a list about conformity? It’s not so wrong to obey instructions, is it?
In 1963, Professor Stanley Milgram conducted a social experiment to test the limits of obedience. He recruited 40 participants, all of whom were told they were partaking in a study designed to improve learning. Participants were told to administer test questions to a group of “learners” and to shock them with different levels of voltage if they answered incorrectly, with highest voltage being a whopping 450 volts. Unbeknownst to the participants, the learners were all confederates with Milgram and received no actual shocks.
Every time the learners answered incorrectly, the participants obediently shocked them. Even as the voltage increased in 15-volt increments and learners began crying about heart trouble, pleading for help, and begging the participants to stop, the majority of participants continued to shock the learners whenever they were told to do so. In fact, 65% of participants continued shocking at the maximum voltage, to the point where the learner became unresponsive.
The power of authority is frightening, isn’t it? What compels us to follow orders even when those orders conflict with our personal beliefs in what we know to be right or good?
Although this example represents an extreme case, obedience is a type of conformity that we should all be aware of. In some ways, we might think of obedience as the formal version of normative conformity: rather than conforming because we think we should do so, we conform because we are told to do so, often by an authority figure.
Now, I’m not saying we all should stage a coup in our workplaces! Rather, I hope to encourage us to think over the instructions we receive from our superiors, be it at work or in a place of worship or any other situation that involves a type of hierarchy. If we instinctively agree with a set of instructions we receive, we should reflect upon why instead of unquestioningly obeying. Obedience is important, yes, but not to the point of suppressing individual reactions.
And there we have it! Six types of conformity and how they shape our daily lives. Of course, informational conformity may be telling you to trust my breakdown of these definitions because you believe that I possess accurate knowledge. If in doubt, try searching up these types of conformity yourself!
(Most definitions sourced from “The Many Varieties of Conformity,” a chapter in Principles of Social Psychology – 1st International H5P Edition, unless otherwise linked.)
Dima Ghawi is the founder of a global talent development company with a primary mission for advancing individuals in leadership. Through keynote speeches, training programs and executive coaching, Dima has empowered thousands of professionals across the globe to expand their leadership potential. In addition, she provides guidance to business executives to develop diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies and to implement a multi-year plan for advancing quality leaders from within the organization.
Reach her at DimaGhawi.com and BreakingVases.com.
