Concepts of Compliance, Obedience and Conformity - Essay Example

Comparing and Contrasting the Concepts of Compliance, Obedience and Conformity JJ Compliance, obedience and conformity are key concepts in the theory of social influence, the process of changes in people’s attitudes and behaviour in response to social interactions. These concepts play an important role in the control of social community’s stability; they serve as powerful tools of maintaining social norms. Although the concepts are similar to the great extent they have the same nature and underlying principles, there are considerable differences between them. The concepts involve changing one’s behaviour in response to different causes. In this essay, on a basis of results of previous research and literature on social influence, similarities and differences of compliance, obedience and conformity are discussed in order to understand better the process of interpersonal influence. Comparing and Contrasting the Concepts of Compliance, Obedience and Conformity. Compliance, obedience and conformity are the major categories of social influence, the process of changes in an individual’s thoughts, attitudes and behaviour, which take place as a result of interactions with other individuals in person or within a social group (Rashotte, 2006). Social psychologists explain this phenomenon by the fact that all people, with few exceptions, want to be “normal”; or in other words, living in a society and belonging to some social group, an individual tends to act in accordance with certain social norms or rules of conduct, accepted by these society and group. According to Scheff, “people are attentive to the behaviour modelled by others and internalize norms readily, especially when those around them provide clear signals about what types of conduct are considered appropriate” (Gerber, Green, & Larimer, 2008, p. 34). This proposition has been well verified by psychological studies both in labs and fields since the first Sherif’s “autokinetic effect” study in 1935. By now the most famous and valuable studies in this area are also the Asch’s series of experiments on conformity in 1951, 1955, and 1956; the Milgram’s shocker study on obedience in 1963, 1974; the Moscovici’s study on minority influence in 1969; the Zimbardo’s Stanford prison simulation study in 1973 (Abelson, Frey, & Gregg, 2004; Vaughan & Hogg, 2008). Social norms are a useful concept helping to explain behaviour of people experiencing social influence and changes. This essay represents an analysis of the concepts of compliance, obedience and conformity. The author defines the concepts and shows their similarities and differences for the purpose of understanding the processes involved in personal change, which in turn are caused by interpersonal influence (Cialdini & Trost, 1998). The research indicates that the concepts of compliance, obedience and conformity have the same nature – all of them may be understood as an individual’s psychic reaction in response to a real or imaginary pressure from a society, which results in changes in an individual’s attitudes, views and social behaviour. For better understanding of social influence, Deutsch and Gerard (1955) suggest distinguishing between information and normative influence. Such distinction, in turn, is founded on the existence of two different classes of social norms – descriptive norms, which inform about how others act in similar situation, and injunctive norms, which prescribe the valued social behaviour (Hogg & Abrams, 1998). In the case of information influence, an individual understands that opinions of others to a greater extent reflect a reality in a given situation, so a person readily accepts their influences and demonstrates conformity, wishing to be “correct” and to act in the “right way”. For instance, a person going to a country with different culture for the first time will likely read tourist guides and ask experienced friends about specific traditions, in order to adjust the behaviour to the country’s social norms and cultural standards. In the case of normative influence, an individual falls in line due to a feeling of some kind of pressure to comply – a person recognizes an importance of following the norms in order to be liked, accepted or approved by the given social group and not to be considered strange, deviant or conspicuous. For example, a person can start smoking if the majority of the peer group smokes, or a business executive buys a car of the model that is popular among partners and colleagues. Moreover, there are specific norms, which people must obey by the law or by their social status, being under a power of authority (Passini & Morselli, 2009). Considering the common nature of compliance, obedience and conformity, according to Kenrick, Neuberg, and Cialdini (2004), they are described as follows: Conformity involves changing one’s behaviour to match the responses or actions of others, to fit in with those around us (Kenrick et al., p.195). Compliance refers to the act of changing one’s behaviour in response to a direct request of others (Kenrick et al., p.195). Obedience involves changing one’s behaviours in response to a directive from an authority figure (Kenrick et al., p.196). All three concepts can be considered as different manifestations of the same phenomenon, which is rooted in the effect of suggestibility on individual behaviour (Cialdini & Trost, 1998; Moscovici, 1985) and on six widely used principles of social influence, which were described by Cialdini (2007) and summarized by Kenrick et al. (2004, pp.200-201): 1. Reciprocation. People are more willing to comply with requests (for favours, services, information) from those who have provided such things first. 2. Commitment / consistency. People are more willing to be moved in a particular direction if they see it as consistent with an existing or recently made commitment. 3. Authority. People are more willing to follow the directions or recommendations of someone they view as an authority. 4. Social validation. People are more willing to take a recommended step if they see evidence that many others, especially similar others, are taking it. 5. Scarcity. People find objects and opportunities more attractive to the degree that they are scarce, rare, or dwindling in availability. 6. Liking / friendship. People prefer to say yes to those they know and like. Cialdini’s principles well adjust with his fundamental idea that human behaviour is goal-directed (Cialdini & Trost, 1998). Cialdini and Trost (1998) suggest that people demonstrate compliance, obedience and conformity, aiming to achieve the following common goals: effective action, building and maintaining social relationships, and managing self-concept. Kenrick et al. (2004) support such vision and introduce another set of goals, yet correlated with the suggestion above, namely that a person yields to some form of social influence and conforms, complies or obeys in order to choose correctly, to gain social approval, or to manage self-image. One more important similarity of the three concepts is their common dependence of context. Perlman (2007) analyses classical studies and demonstrates evidence that situational forces impact human behaviour changes. The studies of Sherif (1936) and Asch (1956) revealed that a level of conformity “varies considerably, depending on situational variables, such as the level of ambiguity in the assigned task, the number of people in the group, the status of the person in the group, and the existence of dissenters” (Perlman, 2007, p.456). All factors related to the current situation in an experiment. Much as in research on conformity, the Milgram’s study on obedience (1974) also shows that the situational factors, e.g. locations of the experiment’s participants (in the same or in different rooms) or administering the shocks by a confederate or by participants themselves, influence a level of obedience. Perlman concludes that “social psychologists have found that conformity and obedience are heavily context-dependent and social forces play a much greater role in determining human behaviour than most people assume” (2007, p.459). It may apply to compliance too, since many scholars consider compliance as a specific type of conformity – “conformity due to the sanctions the society or group has in effect” (Boeree, 2009, p.98). Moreover, some researchers define obedience as a special type of compliance (Bordens & Horowitz, 2008) as a change in behaviour and attitudes in response to direct request from an authority figure. Therefore, both obedience and compliance are, to some extent, varieties of conformity; and all three concepts are based on the same theoretical fundamentals, bearing resemblance to one other. At the same time, the concepts of compliance, obedience and conformity are different in several ways. In general, people conform to others when perceived to be under pressure from social surroundings (family, school, job, any other social group and a society) and it may make them act differently from how they would act if alone (Cialdini & Trost, 1998). Conformity can be various: Sometimes the pressure is not explicitly expressed; it can exist in a form of a social norm learned by a person unconsciously – in childhood, from parents or friends. Such norm is taken as “the way things are” and an adoption of this norm is doubted rarely. Nolan et al. (2008) give an example of the research where participants were asked to imagine themselves working in a library – an associated norm of being quiet in the library forced the participants to lower their voices. Sometimes conformity is deliberate, people want to be identified with the group that is attractive and valuable for them, e.g. professional clubs, and adopt norms of the group purposely. One more kind of conformity is the following the majority (“the crowd”), where participants revealed a tendency to go along with the group, as it was shown in the Asch’s study (Bordens & Horowitz, 2008; Kenrick et al., 2004). Conway and Schaller (2005) explain conformity in two ways. The first one is a natural desire of people not to be different from others; it is connected with normative influence and is commonly recognized as public conformity – when people change their behaviours, but not their opinion. The other one is rooted in the behaviour of others and provides people with valuable information about the reality, so that people gain a “social proof” of widely accepted beliefs and agree with them. It is connected with information influence and is recognized as private conformity – when people change not only behaviours, but also opinions. A great example of the conformity is the story of the author who migrated to Victoria Australia and had to make new friends there. In order to fit in with a large group of people, who were keen on fishing, she developed new interests. At first the author exhibited mostly public compliance, fishing to show others that she indeed liked to go fishing, whether or not she actually did. But over time the author gained private acceptance to fishing, now she really likes fishing and enjoys having a similar interest with peers. Her conformity was mainly due to normative social influence and the fact that she accepted to be liked by new friends. The concept of compliance differs in that it occurs when a person changes behaviour (intentionally or unintentionally) in response to a direct request from another person or a social group. Cialdini and Trost emphasise that it is “a particular kind of response – acquiescence – to a particular kind of communication – a request” (1998, p.168). The request may be both explicit (e.g. like in charitable donations companies) and implicit (e.g. in advertisement, when consumer goods are touted without asking to buy directly) – in both cases people, which experience an influence, understand they are expected to act in a certain way. It is important to note that in the case of compliance the person making the request has no formal power to force another person to honour a request - people make decisions to comply with requests on their own. The concept of obedience also has important differences, as it refers to changes in individuals behaviours in response to a request of authority. For example, an employee carries out an order of a boss, even if she does not want to do that or does not feel it is her responsibility. Obedience involves the use of authority or a superior in a process of social influence, and it is characterised by the presence of social hierarchical distances between participants and requesters. Any authority or a superior possesses formal (legitimate) power and may force people to obey without their consent. Kelman and Hamilton assert that “under orders from an authority, it appears that many normal people respond with obedience, despite their own scruples and discomfort about actions that they and others would usually regard as illegal, immoral, and even unthinkable” (Passini & Morselli, 2009, p.97). Thus, the understanding of three concepts can be briefly summarized as follows: while the key aspect of conformity is changes in behaviour caused by the group pressure; the main feature of compliance is the execution of a particular task given by others or going along with a request of others; and the central point of obedience is the performance of social duties either statutory or formulary. All three concepts are similar in that they represent particular forms of social influence or processes where behaviour and attitudes of a person are influenced by the real or implied presence of other people (Vaughan & Hogg, 2008). But if in a case of conformity people are motivated to follow a group’s norm mostly of their own free will; in a case of compliance or obedience, according to Tyler (2001), they agree to accept a particular type of social behaviour, being based upon their assessment of the potential gains and losses related to this behaviour. For example, a teenager wears an uniform in a school (obedience to the school’s authority order), or a grandmother’s sweater on a Christmas Eve (compliance to her mother’s request), but she puts on jeans in her day-to-day activity with more pleasure, because she feels it is more appropriate clothing for her social group (conformity). Vaughan and Hogg (2008) emphasise that in cases of obedience and compliance social norms are not internalised by people, while conformity, motivated by an individual’s internal values, contributes to creation of genuine, internalized changes in behaviour and attitudes. Tyler (2001) argues that the behaviour based upon internal values is more important, because it is more deep-seated and does not depend on circumstances. In a conclusion, it is important to note that although conformity, compliance and obedience are often discussed from a negative perspective, in fact they serve as powerful tools of maintaining social norms - their role in the control of social community’s stability is considerable (Cialdini & Trost, 1998). References Abelson, R.P., Frey, K.P., & Gregg, A.P. (2004). Experiments with people: Revelations from social psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Boeree, G.C. (2009). Personality theory: A biosocial approach. Psychology Department, Shippensburg University. Retrieved from http://www.social-psychology.de/do/personality%20theory.%20a%20biosocial%20approach.pdf Bordens, K.S., & Horowitz, I.A. (2008). Social psychology (3rd ed.). Saint Paul, MN: Freeload Press. 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