Conformity
the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms
Social conformity or social conformism is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms, politics or being like-minded. Norms are implicit, specific rules, guidance shared by a group of individuals, that guide their interactions with others. People often choose to conform to society rather than pursue personal desires – because it is often easier to follow the path others have already made than to forge a new one. Thus, conformity is sometimes a product of group communication. This tendency to conform occurs in small groups and/or in society as a whole and may result from subtle unconscious influences (predisposed state of mind), or from direct and overt social pressure. Conformity can occur in the presence of others or when an individual is alone. For example, people tend to follow social norms when eating or when watching television, even if alone.
Solomon Asch, a social psychologist whose obedience research remains among the most influential in psychology, demonstrated the power of conformity through his experiment on line judgment. The Asch conformity experiment demonstrates the extent to which conformity influences people. In a laboratory experiment, Asch asked 50 male students from Swarthmore College in the US to participate in a 'vision test'.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q221284. The Library of Congress control number is sh85031062. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Conformity” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.