Why Do People Conform

I have never heard of 'Conformity' as well, so I searched it. Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in behavior or belief so as to fit in with a group. This change is in response to real or imagined group pressure that may take different forms, including bullying, persuasion, teasing, and criticism. There are three reasons we conform: ambiguous subject, high majority, and authoritative figure.

Conformity by ambiguous subject is that a person changes their behavior to fit in with the group, while also agreeing with them privately. It seems that this conformity is most likely to occur when the majority have greater knowledge, and members of the minority have little knowledge to challenge the majority position. One of the famous social psychologist Muzafer Sherif made use of the autokinetic effect, which
The autokinetic effect is an illusion that the light does not actually move. However, people almost believe that it does. He asked subjects to estimate how far the light moved. They established their own individual norms for the judgment— 2 to 6 inches. Next, groups of subjects were put in the dark room, 2 or 3 people at a time, and asked to agree on a judgment. People who usually made an estimate like 6 inches soon made smaller judgments like 4 inches. Those who saw less movement, such as 2 inches, soon increased their judgments to about 4 inches. People changed to more resemble the others in the group. When Sherif asked subjects directly that they were influenced by the judgments of other persons during the experiments, most of them denied it. However, when subjects were tested one at a time, later, most now conformed to the group judgment they recently made. After the group experiment, the subject who previously settled on an