218 Stephanie Amedeo Marquez
“People from collectivist cultures are more concerned [than individuals
from competitive cultures] with gaining the approval of the group, and they
feel shameful if they fail to get it” (pp. 642-643). Scholars such as Triandis
(1989) and Wall et al. (2010) support Franzoi’s (2018) conclusions. “A
person from an individualist culture, on the other hand, has a higher desire
for personal control” (p. 643). Franzoi’s social social psychological
exposition of the Asch research does not commit the critical thinking
mistake of Ettinger above, neither attributing the experiment as having
shown “correct answers” to respondents, being “obvious”, nor providing
“accurate information about reality”. Instead, the alternative explanations
are said to be due to effects of interdependence in a collectivist culture
creating social influence that moves the individual’s attitudes, and
behaviors, away from their visual perceptions to conform with the group.
“As a result of these different orientations, people from collectivist cultures
are more conforming” (Franzoi, 2018, p. 642). Franzoi’s text also mentions
Bond and Smith (1996) as an alternative explanation, making this SSP
inquiry of social psychology more socially aware, by discussing the nature
of social influence as interactive, and pertinent to differences in cultures,
and mentioning global cultures.
Hockenbury and Hockenbury (2011, p. 474) use the heading of
“Conformity: Following the Crowd” and list the key theme as “social
influence involves the study of how behavior is influenced by other people
and by the social environment”, yet they list as “factors influencing
conformity” individualistic ones: desire to be liked and accepted by the
group, and desire to be right (p. 275). They cite under “culture and
conformity” the question raised by Bond and Smith’s (1996) meta-analysis
that patterns of conformity differ in “other” cultures (p. 476). Thus by
labeling the idea of ‘collectivism’ as ‘other’ commits the error of mistaking
indigenous knowledge as lesser, as Atencio (2009) has pointed out.
In covering the Asch experiment, Lillienfeld et al. (2014, p. 503)
define ‘conformity’ individualistically: “Conformity refers to the tendency
of people to alter their behavior as a result of group pressure”. In
discussing “individual, cultural, and gender differences in conformity”,
Lillienfeld, et al. (2014) refer to Kim and Markus’s (1999) colored pen