conformity

Why do people conform?

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits, and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts."

(William Shakespeare As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7.)

This assignment will investigate the concepts of conformity, compliance and obedience, it will lay out the similarities and difference between them by looking at the factors that influence each. It will also investigate why people conform to society and their surroundings, how this process takes place and also how different environments can affect how conformity occurs. How social influence can affect an individual and also why we feel the need to conform to social groups we are influenced by. The assignment will take a look at a number of psychological approaches from the subject matter including the Zimbardo experiment (1973), Sherif's study of Social Formation (1935) and also Asch experiment (1951).

Asch conformity experiment

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Asch unanimous majority chart

It will examine the events that happened in Abu Ghraib prison during the occupation of Iraq by American armed services. Also the reasons soldiers acted the way they did and what could be done to have prevented those actions. It will also evaluate a range of psychological terms and express the main concepts within conformity and social psychology.

"Conformity; Action or behaviour in correspondence with socially accepted standards, conventions, rules, or laws." (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/conformity,2013)

Conformity is social influence that entails a change of behaviors, attitudes and beliefs that are perceived as normal in society or within a social group. The first answer to the question, why do people conform? Has something to do with normal social influence. A person conforms because he wants to fit in, the person discards his own stand on beliefs because he feels that if he doesn't, he might get rejected by the...