The Importance Of Conformity In Society

The majority of people relish in the idea that they are their own unique individuals with special characteristics that distinguish them from a crowd. However, despite this wishful thinking, most of people tend to comply with a set of societal rules. These are rules such as using turn signals, not using cell phones in movie theatres, and how almost all children and adults attend school and go to work every day. There are obvious reasons for conformity in our society, as a societal structure would break down without them. But why is it that people will give in and conform to irrational expectations of groups, some of these groups being life threatening such as drinking games at college parties or the mass suicide in Jonestown? Over recent decades, social psychology has revealed startling evidence of how individuals are influenced by groups. The causes of compliance among individuals have been researched and debated by numerous psychologists and behavioral experts. People often conform to group expectations as a result of innate desires, and in doing so gain social acceptance and establish their social identity, but with group conformity comes the chance of life-threatening consequences.

A group becomes dangerous when members feel anonymous and will commit atrocities because they feel less responsible. This is because their thoughts have morphed into a group mentality. Another experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in “The Perils of Obedience” showed this danger of people losing responsibility through obedience when subjects were commanded by the experimenter to shock an acting subject in another room. What was learned from this experiment is that sixty-five percent of subjects were willing to shock a stranger at deathly high levels so long as the experimenter told them to. Subjects lost their sense of identity in obedience and therefore did not feel responsible for their