Social Influences That Promote Conformity Essay
When observing groups ranging from young people who pick up on every trend, to employees who absorb their professional roles, to diners at a fine restaurant who perform in the expected polite manner, we see that people regularly conform to their surroundings. This can be explained in part by two major social influences that promote conformity: the need to be accepted by one’s peers and the need to obtain new, correct information.
The need for acceptance by one’s peers is known as a normative influence. We conform to meet the expectations of others, behaving in accordance with social norms. In addition, social rejection is so feared by most people, often unconsciously if not consciously, that an individual will lie about one’s opinions and alter …show more content…
We trust the opinions, actions, and perceptions of others to bolster our own understanding of the world. One of the ways informational influence works to shape our behavior is evident in how we trust online reviews from strangers to give us an idea of whether we should purchase a product. If a product has an average rating of 2/5 stars, we are unlikely to purchase the product over one with more positive reviews even though we do not know the reviewers or their level of expertise in relation to the product. What we see commonly here, people’s trust in the opinions of others to influence their decisions, was also seen in Muzafer Sherif’s 1935 and 1937 studies on social norm creation. By manipulating the perception of participants by utilizing an optical illusion, Sherif created a difficult test that required participants to determine the distance moved by a point of light on a darkened wall. After a person made an initial guess without hearing the opinions of anyone else, they returned the following day to guess again, but only after hearing other answers. Their answers tended to change; participants were likely to adjust their answer to be a smaller distance, for example, if they heard several others answer that the light moved a shorter distance than the participant’s initial estimate. As it is difficult for one to come up with the correct answer themselves for
The need for acceptance by one’s peers is known as a normative influence. We conform to meet the expectations of others, behaving in accordance with social norms. In addition, social rejection is so feared by most people, often unconsciously if not consciously, that an individual will lie about one’s opinions and alter …show more content…
We trust the opinions, actions, and perceptions of others to bolster our own understanding of the world. One of the ways informational influence works to shape our behavior is evident in how we trust online reviews from strangers to give us an idea of whether we should purchase a product. If a product has an average rating of 2/5 stars, we are unlikely to purchase the product over one with more positive reviews even though we do not know the reviewers or their level of expertise in relation to the product. What we see commonly here, people’s trust in the opinions of others to influence their decisions, was also seen in Muzafer Sherif’s 1935 and 1937 studies on social norm creation. By manipulating the perception of participants by utilizing an optical illusion, Sherif created a difficult test that required participants to determine the distance moved by a point of light on a darkened wall. After a person made an initial guess without hearing the opinions of anyone else, they returned the following day to guess again, but only after hearing other answers. Their answers tended to change; participants were likely to adjust their answer to be a smaller distance, for example, if they heard several others answer that the light moved a shorter distance than the participant’s initial estimate. As it is difficult for one to come up with the correct answer themselves for