Conformity

Your best friends invite you to a music festival with their favorite artists. After looking through the lineup, you realize you are not familiar with the artists playing. You proceed to listen to their songs, and can’t help but notice you aren’t a fan of this genre of music. Despite your concerns, you convince yourself it’s not bad. In fact, you tell yourself, “it’s pretty good!” You don’t want to be left out. Ultimately, you conform and buy a ticket and join your friends at the festival.

Conformity refers to an individual aligning their behavior, perception, or opinion with those of another person or group.¹ An individual may consciously or unconsciously act in a certain way due to influence from others. We have a natural tendency to unconsciously mirror the behaviors of those we interact with, such as language, gestures, and talking speed.² Researchers say that mimicking individuals subconsciously do can increase our connection to those we interact with, allowing interactions to flow more effortlessly.³

There are two main explanations provided by social psychology for conformity¹:

• Informational conformity refers to an individual aligning with the view of others as a result of an assumption that others hold knowledge about a situation or topic.
• Normative conformity refers to an individual giving in to the expectations or opinions of others, such as friends or co-workers, in an effort to be liked or accepted.

Part of the prevalence of conformity in human behavior can be explained by reinforcement learning.¹ Being liked or accepted by a certain group is, in itself, a reward.