Look where you’re going!
Don’t talk with your mouth full!
Say “Cheese”!
What do these various imperatives have in common? They are all examples of social norms.
Norms are templates for acceptable conduct. They tell us how we should behave in a given situation - everything from walking down the street to running a business. Queuing is a social norm. So is tipping your waiter. So is minding your Ps and Qs. Swearing, belching and nose-picking are all proscribed by social norms; bowing, wearing a tie and flushing the toilet are all sanctioned. Some norms – such as the incest taboo – are universal, while others are context-specific: class, culture and gender are prominent variables.
How and why norms form has long been of interest to social psychologists, beginning with the work of Muzafer Sherif (1935). Social norms do not always reflect our individual or private opinion. It is perfectly possible to hold a public attitude that is at odds with our personal one. Personally, you might think that shaking hands is unhygienic or outdated, but publicly, you go along with it, upholding the socially norm. How many of us went along with our peers at school, picking on other students or smoking behind the bike shed, even when we felt inside it was wrong? These are examples of conformity.
Generally speaking, conformity is incidental, which means it’s not deliberate. This distinguishes conformity from other forms of social influence, such as compliance, persuasion and obedience. The first major psychological study of conformity was carried out by Solomon Asch in 1951.
Sherif’s and Asch’s experiments reflect two different explanations for conformity. The first, relevant to Sherif’s study, is informational influence, where people conform to a group norm in order to gain information. (This occurs when someone is unsure of their own opinion, and needs more data to make a judgement.) The second explanation, evident in Asch’s experiment, is normative influence, where people conform in order to gain acceptance or avoid exclusion. (This occurs when someone is sure of their own opinion, but doesn’t want to risk being “the odd one out”.)
Conformity can be constructive,[1] but it can also be dangerous. This was famously demonstrated by John Darley and Bibb Latané, in one of the most widely cited experiments in the history of psychology: the smoke-filled room. In the experiment, a number of university students were invited to share their thoughts about urban life. Those who agreed to take part were asked to first fill out some forms in a waiting room prior to being interviewed. As they did so, smoke began to enter the room through a small vent in the wall. After four minutes, the smoke was sufficient to affect one’s vision and breathing.
When the participants were alone, most of them investigated the smoke and informed someone about it. However, Darley and Latané were more interested in how people reacted when others were present. For the second phase of the experiment, the students were joined in the waiting room by two undercover actors, who had been instructed not to react to the smoke. At most, they would shrug their shoulders before returning to their forms. What happened next was significant. In the words of Darley and Latané, “only one of the ten subjects…reported the smoke. The other nine subjects stayed in the waiting room for the full six minutes while it continued to fill up with smoke. … They coughed, rubbed their eyes, and opened the window – but they did not report the smoke.”
The smoke-filled room study is an example of the so-called bystander effect, which holds that individuals are less likely to help others when other people are present. Though this theory has been widely criticised in recent years, it has become part of psychological lore, and continues to be implicated in tragedies around the world.
Social influence works not only on individuals but also on groups, shaping the norm itself. This can be seen in research on group polarisation and groupthink. Group polarisation is a process through which a social norm becomes more extreme, or polarised, among people with similar beliefs and attitudes. Imagine, for example, a group of environmental activists discussing the climate crisis. Naturally, people will share their ideas and findings with other group members, resulting in informational influence. At the same time, people will be motivated to “fit in” with others, expressing public attitudes in line with the group – this is normative influence. Together, these pressures cause people to converge on the group norm, which in turn causes the consensus of the group to become stronger, shifting the norm to a more extreme position. Group polarisation is particularly prevalent in political groups, social media, juries, and other opinion-based assemblies. In extreme cases, group polarisation can give way to groupthink, where the desire for conformity results in irrational or immoral decision making.
Groupthink was first studied in the early 1970s by Irving Janis, who identified three broad symptoms of the problem: close-mindedness (such as dismissing any ideas that might challenge the group’s thinking); heightened pressure to conform (such as through self-censorship); and overestimation of the group’s value (such as a sense of moral and intellectual infallibility). According to Janis, groupthink occurs when the cohesiveness of a group is so high that there is no scope for disagreement or dissent. This is particularly common in high-stress situations, and in contexts where the flow of information is disrupted. The consequences of groupthink can be catastrophic. A classic example is the 1986 Challenger disaster, in which NASA’s high cohesiveness, overconfidence and close-mindedness contributed to fundamentally flawed decision making, and led, ultimately, to the deaths of all seven astronauts on board. (Groupthink was also evident in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1961 and the 2016 US presidential election, among other events.)
Conformity, then, is morally ambiguous – both opportunity and constraint. On the one hand, conforming helps us to learn “the rules of society”, which in turn reduces risk and disruption. On the other hand, excessive conformity can give way to coercion, corruption and complacency, which in turn can lead to disaster.
[1] Public smoking laws = positive conformity? https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_conformity_can_be_good_and_bad_for_society