Social Coordination 397another. The ways and means of coordination are discussed
in this section, as are the functions—both adaptive and
maladaptive—of this fundamental human tendency.
Conformity
People go to a lot trouble to influence one another. Yet for
all the effort expended in service of manipulation, sometimes
all it takes to influence a person is to convey one’s own atti-
tude or action preference. People take solace from the ex-
pressions of like-minded people and develop new ways of
interpreting reality from those with different perspectives. In
both cases, simply expressing an opinion—no tricks, strate-
gies, or power plays—may be sufficient to bring someone
into line with one’s point of view. This form of influence cap-
tures the essence of conformity, a phenomenon that is com-
monly counted as evidence for people’s herdlike mentality.
There is a nonreflective quality to many instances of confor-
mity, but this property enables people to coordinate their
thoughts in an efficient manner and attain the social consen-
sus necessary to engage in collective action. We consider first
what constitutes conformity, and then we develop both the
positive and negative consequences of this manifestation of
social influence.
Group Pressure and Conformity
Conformity represents a “change in behavior or belief to-
ward a group as a result of real or imagined group pressure”
(Kiesler & Kiesler, 1976). Defined in this way, conformity
would seem to be a defining feature of group dynamics.
Festinger (1950), for example, suggested that pressures to-
ward uniformity invariably exist in groups and are brought
to bear on the individual so that over time, he or she will tend
to conform to the opinions and behavior patterns of the other
group members. If one of two diners at a table for two says
that he or she finds the food distasteful and the other person
expresses a more favorable opinion, the first person is un-
likely to change his or her views to match those of his or
her companion. However, the addition of several more dinner
companions, each holding the contrary position, may well
cause the person to rethink his or her position and estab-
lish common ground with the others. If he or she has yet to
express an opinion, the likelihood of conforming to the
others’ opinions is all the greater. To investigate the variables
at work in this sort of context—group size, unanimity of
group opinion, and the timing of the person’s expressed
judgment—Solomon Asch (1951, 1956) performed a series
of experiments that became viewed unanimously by social
psychologists as classics.
Asch’s original intention actually was to demonstrate that
people donotconform slavishly and uncritically in a group
setting (Levine, 1996). Asch put his hope for humanity to a
test in a simple and elegant way. Participants thought they
were participating in a study on perception. They sat facing a
pair of white cardboards on which vertical lines were drawn.
One card had a single line, which provided the standard for
subjects’ perceptual judgments. The second card had three
lines of varying length, one of which was clearly the same
length as the standard. Participants were simply asked to
indicate which of the three lines matched the standard. The
correct answer was always obvious, and in fact when partici-
pants were tested individually, they rarely made a mistake. To
give conformity a chance, Asch (1951) placed a naive par-
ticipant in a group setting with six other people, who were
actually experimental accomplices pretending to be naive
participants. By arrangement, the participant always made
his judgment after hearing the bogus participants make their
judgments. For the first two trials, the accomplices (and, of
course, the participant) gave the obviously correct answers.
After creating this group consensus, the accomplices gave a
unanimous but incorrect answer on the third trial—and again
on trials 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 12. To Asch’s surprise, the typical
participant conformed to the incorrect group response one
third of the time. Over 80% of the participants conformed to
the incorrect majority on at least one trial, and 7% conformed
on all seven of the critical trials. Although it was not his in-
tent, Asch had demonstrated that even when there is a clear
reality, people are still inclined to go along with the crowd.Informational and Normative InfluencePresumably, Asch’s participants conformed because they
wanted the other group members to like them or because they
were fearful of ridicule if they failed to go along. During post-
experimental interviews, participants typically mentioned
these concerns as their motivation for concurring with obvi-
ously inaccurate judgments. And when Asch allowed partici-
pants to make their responses privately in writing as opposed
to publicly by voice, the extent to which participants con-
formed showed a marked decrease. Because people are obvi-
ously less concerned about the approval of others when the
others cannot monitor their behavior, these findings suggest
that participants’ conformity did in fact reflect a desire to win
approval or avoid disapproval.
Social approval does not exhaust the possible motives for
conformity, however. Indeed, several years prior to Asch’s
research, Muzafer Sherif (1936) had concocted an equally
compelling experimental situation relevant to conformity, but
one that played on the often ambiguous nature of physical