Conformity is defined as the act of changing one’s beliefs, moral, values, or simply anything to what is considered to be the norm in society. Conformity has been studied in many areas whether it is socially or even computer mediated context (CMC). Furthermore, there are two types of conformity to focus on, normative and informational. These are two categories in which we classify conformity in. Normative conformity has to do with conforming in order to get people to become our friend or even accept us (Moscovici, 1980). An example of this would be if Tom sees that everyone has iPhones, he will want to conform in order to be accepted by his peer therefore buying himself an iPhone. On the contrary, informational conformity is where people conform because they believe the information is correction (Deutsch and Gerard, 1955). Consequently, a perfect example where informational conformity was tested was in a study called Ash’s line judgment task.
One of the most famous studies dealing with conformity was the Ash’s line judgment task (Rosander & Eriksson, 2012). The purpose of his study was to examine how far a participant would go with the pressures of a majority group giving the wrong answer to affect the participant. They simply had a group of people who know what the study was about with one actually participant in the room. They were then shown a target line and three options to determine which of the options was the same size as the target line. The group in the room would purposely give the wrong answer to see if the one actual participant in the room would conform to the wrong answer or actually state the right answer. They then just tested how far the participant went by being pressure to conform to the wrong answer. For more information feel free to watch the video down below on Ash’s experiment.
Cyber-Conforming
Additionally, with the norms we have made for certain genders and cultures we remain to conform to what our society wants to see us as. People conform in many areas of their lives and on the internet is a place we do it often for many reasons. As stated above, people may conform because of their cultures, the difficulty of the task, or even simply when people simply but their name on something.
The internet is used by many people around the world. It is estimated that about 97% of people between the ages of 16-50 use the internet. (Rosander & Eriksson, 2012). With that being said, Rosander and Eriksson decided to do a study regarding conforming and the difficulty of tasks (Rosander & Eriksson, 2012). They also wanted to compare cyber conformity between genders. In previous studies they found that studying genders within conformity has many mixed views.
In a study done by Eagly, Wood, and Fishbaugh they found that when participants knew they were being monitored men were conforming less than women (Eagly, Wood, and Fishbaugh, 1981). They stated that this was not because women increased their conformity either (Eagly, Wood, and Fishbaugh, 1981). A reason as to why this may be is because they believe that non-conformity causes more attention towards the individual (Eagly, Wood, and Fishbaugh, 1981). The only difference they found between the two genders was in a study done by Guadagno and Cialdini in 2007. They found that men conformed more when it dealt with people of the same status or higher (Guadagno and Cialdini, 2007). Overall in Rosander and Eriksson’s study there was no significance difference between the two genders on the internet (Rosander & Eriksson, 2012). People conform for different reasons and in the different situations they may be in.