Introduction
Conformity? A topic of interest for many years within the psychological field. It is widely accepted that human behavior is heavily influenced by social factors, such as esteem, popularity, or acceptance (Bernheim, 994). The definition of conformity, although debated across the schools of disciplines, is generally accepted to be a behavior intended to fulfill normative group expectations as these expectations are perceived by the individual. (Willis, 965). Research into conformity arises from Jenness (932), who focused on conformity in an ambiguous situation involving a glass bottle filled with beans in which participants had to individually guess the number of beans. Participants then took part in a group discussion where they had the opportunity to hear about the other estimates given, and after participants had a choice to stick to the original answer or change their estimate, Jenness found most students changed their estimate to be closer to the group estimate. Sherif (935), who examined the effects of conformity in ambiguous situations, found similar results in his conformity research. Participants underwent a visual illusion experiment and when tested in a group over numerous trials, participants conformed to the group norm. From both studies, it could be concluded that when in an ambiguous situation a person will look to others for guidance as opposed to using their judgments. However, these experiments are criticized due to their methodology, because of the ambiguity and lack of a true answer this makes participants more likely to conform because they are never, nor is it possible, to complete certain of their answers, (Crano, 2000). Whereas incorporating an unambiguous task avoids this issue, which Asch (95), researched. His method involved placing real nave participants in a room with confederates who had agreed on their answers ahead of time. The real participant was deceived into believing the other seven people were also real participants. Each person was then required to say out loud which line (A, B, or C) was most similar to the target line in length. It was intended to find out whether the real participant would accept the majority view, even if it was wrong and it was found that a majority of participants conformed to the incorrect answer. Aschs study has been very influential in conf
ormity research and the implications of this study impact many different areas.
A particular area of interest that sparked discussion around conformity is its impact on society and politics. Coleman (2007) argues that when conformity influences voters choice it could hijack a democratic government and lead to serious violence, particularly against minority groups. Thus indicating that conformity in a particular context can have serious consequences. Similarly, conformity research has also discussed its impact on law and jury decision-making. Tanford and Penrod (986) found that during jury deliberation, jurors who changed from guilty to not guilty were the result of conforming to group pressure, despite not changing their private decision thus showing signs of compliance, a type of conformity (Deutsch and Gerad, 955). Further solidifying the importance of research on this topic of conformity as it may have a detrimental impact on individuals in society. Further research also explored the relationship between conformity and the education system, a key institution for secondary socialization. Menter (206) finds that teacher education is highly influenced by conformity to the wider institutions and their frameworks of standards, and thus it could be argued that education is politically controlled. They find that a consequence of this is that in teaching, which is meant to be a creative and critical occupation that can ensure the health of a society, it may be discouraged to incorporate new ideas and change and instead it is encouraged rather to conform to old, widespread practices which could lead to a system of stagnation and regression (Peters, 966). Despite that, another key institution of socialization that research has found is influenced by conformity in the workplace. Facades of conformity (FOC) are similar to, yet different from, other forms of conformity (Wong, 208) and are defined by Hewlin (2003) as suppressing a personal view to embrace organizational values to survive in an organization. Hewlin et al (206) found a positive relationship between perceived job insecurity and FOC, which is in line with Stormer and Devines (2008) research that found FOC is highly affected by the internal psychological factor of perceived risk to their livelihood. Thus clearly showing the impact of conformity in the workplace.