Socio-psychological influence: conformity, suggestibility, submission

Social influence occurs when, as a result of interaction, a person’s repeated response to a problem is more closely related to another person’s response than to their own initial response, i.e., one person’s behavior becomes similar to that of other people.

A distinction should be made between conformity and suggestibility. Conformity is a person’s exposure to group pressure, a change in their behavior under the influence of others, and a person’s conscious compliance with the opinion of the majority of the group in order to avoid conflict with it. Suggestibility, or suggestion, is the involuntary compliance of a person with the opinion of others or a group (the person himself did not notice how his views and behavior changed, it happens by itself, sincerely).

Distinguish between:

• internal personal conformity (learned conformal reaction) — a person’s opinion really changes under the influence of a group, a person agrees that the group is right, and changes his initial opinion in accordance with the opinion of the group, subsequently showing the learned group opinion, behavior and in the absence of a group;
• demonstrative agreement with the group for various reasons (most often to avoid conflicts, troubles for oneself or loved ones), while maintaining one’s own opinion deep down (external, public conformity).

Research has shown that suggestibility and conformity are more or less inherent in every person from childhood to the end of life, but their severity is influenced by age, gender, profession, group composition, etc. Under the influence of what factors is a person inferior to a group?

1. First of all, the characteristics of the person himself are affected: in adolescence and adolescence, conformity is highest, then it decreases. After the age of 25, it remains with each person at a constant individual level. Women have higher conformity than men, but not always: if the problem under discussion belongs to the category of stereotypically feminine activities, then women are not inferior, and men are becoming more conformist. The level of conformity also depends on a person’s professional activity. Thus, a high level of conformity is observed among employees involved in constant group activities, and among the military it is higher than among engineers.
2. The characteristics of the problem itself and the characteristics of the stimulus material are affected: the more complex and ambivalent the stimulus material, the more often conformity appears. Categorical, qualitative stimuli (rather than quantitative characteristics of stimuli) increase the ability to resist group pressure.
3. The size of the group also has an effect. Previously, it was assumed that an increase in group size leads to an increase in conformity, but it turned out that the dependence is not linear, but exponential. When another person joins the majority, the “naive” subject’s conformity increases, but to a lesser extent than when the previous person joined the majority. Conformity increases with an increase in the group only up to a certain limit (3-5-7 people), after which it does not grow, but even then only when all members of the group are perceived by a person as independent of each other. Thus, conformity is primarily influenced by the number of perceived independent sources of information. The degree of majority agreement also affects. Thus, when the unity of group opinion is destroyed, a person more boldly resists group pressure.
4. The relationship between a person and a group affects the level of conformity (for example, when people worked for joint remuneration and it was necessary to make a common decision, conformity increased). The higher the degree of a person’s commitment to a group, the more often conformity is manifested. But there is an exception to this rule: the question is, is the person seeking acceptance from the group? If a person wants to be accepted by a group, he often gives in to the group, and vice versa, if he does not value his group, he more boldly resists group pressure. Individuals with a higher status in the group (leaders) They are able to resist the group’s opinion quite strongly, because leadership is associated with some deviations from group patterns. Individuals with average status are most susceptible to group pressure, while those in the polar categories are more able to resist group pressure.

What is the reason for conformity? From the point of view of the information approach (Festinger), a modern person cannot verify all the information that comes to him. Therefore, he relies on other people’s opinions when it is shared by many. A person succumbs to group pressure because he wants to have a more accurate image of reality (“the majority cannot be mistaken”).

From the point of view of the “normative influence” hypothesis, a person succumbs to group pressure because he wants to have some of the advantages of membership in a group, wants to avoid conflicts, avoid sanctions if he deviates from the accepted norm, and wants to support his further interaction with the group.

The positive value of conformism is that it stands for:

• as a mechanism of cohesion of human groups, human society;
• the mechanism of transmission of social heritage, culture, traditions, social patterns of behavior, social attitudes.

Excessive conformity is a psychologically harmful phenomenon. A person, like a weather vane, follows a group opinion without having his own views, acting as a puppet in someone else’s hands, or a person realizes himself as a hypocritical opportunist, capable of repeatedly changing behavior and outwardly expressed beliefs in accordance with “where the wind blows from” at the moment, to please the “powerful of this world.” According to psychologists, many Soviet people were shaped in the direction of such increased conformity.

Nonconformism acts as a refutation by a person of the opinion of the majority, as a protest of subordination, as the apparent independence of the individual from the opinion of the group, although in fact here, too, the point of view of the majority is the basis for human behavior. Conformism and nonconformism are related personality traits, they are properties of positive or negative subordination to the influences on the personality of the group, but it is subordination. Therefore, the behavior of a nonconformist is just as easy to control as the behavior of a conformist.

The opposite of conformism and nonconformism is self—determination, which is a person’s selective attitude towards any influences of their own group, which are accepted or rejected depending on whether they correspond to the person’s beliefs, whether they correspond to the goals and objectives of the group’s activities, i.e. the decision is made by a person independently with full personal responsibility for its consequences.

What determines the relationship between a person and a group? On the one hand, the stability of group existence entails unification, assimilation, and similarity of individuals within the group, i.e. the group tends to balance its components. On the other hand, each member of the group can be considered as a source of transformation of the opinions of other members of the group, i.e. a minority can influence the majority in the group, since not only people adapt to the social environment, but also individuals adapt the social environment to their views.

Under what conditions can a minority transform the position of the majority? Minorities themselves, both in business and social situations, can be different.:

1. A minority whose position does not differ substantially from the majority, but is only more radical.;
2. the position of the minority is opposed to the position of the majority.

In order for a minority to transform the opinion of the majority, it is necessary that the minority be accepted in the group, be part of the group, and not rejected, not expelled from it; so that the minority has the opportunity to express its position openly enough. In this case, the following dynamics of intra-group influences occur::

1. At first, most people get the feeling that “they” (the minority) are “abnormal”;
2. later, doubts arise that address the problem itself, the incentive itself. Maybe there are external objective reasons that make “them” say “the wrong thing”?
3. later there is a stage of doubt in their own position, i.e. a review of their abilities to adequately determine the correct answer.

This sociocognitive conflict generates a revision of the majority’s opinion if there is no real confirmation of the correctness of the majority’s positions. If additional information is being received at the moment about the partial inaccuracy of the majority’s position, the revision process is faster, and it is not even necessary that the minority’s position be confirmed by valid real arguments.

If the “minority” receives official power or the opportunity to widely promote their opinions, the process of transformation, change, and revision of the majority’s position is more intense. If a minority is expelled from a group or is deprived of the opportunity to express its position, the majority opinion of the group leads the group for a long time.

A common form of social influence is obedience, submission to authority, and a person’s exposure to the influence of a person with a higher social status. If we exclude the risk factor for a person to receive social punishment if they disobey a person with a higher status (in this case, in order to protect themselves, a person seeks to minimize trouble and punishment for themselves by choosing a strategy of subordination), what other factors can strengthen the tendency to submit?

In the experiments of the American psychologist Stanley Milgram, subjects in the role of “teachers” punished the victims with electric shocks, and most of the subjects continued to participate in the experiment even with visible severe pain and fainting of the “victim”. Why do people stay involved in the experiment? They can have two types of psychological states of interaction.:

1. An autonomous state of personality, a sense of personal responsibility for everything that happens around.
2. A person imagines himself as occupying a certain step in the hierarchical ladder, and therefore believes that the responsibility for his behavior is borne by an individual who is at a higher level of this hierarchy, the phenomenon of “diffusion of responsibility” or “attribution of responsibility”, attributing it to another person, and not to himself.

Similarly, in this experiment, many subjects perceived the experimenter as a person who occupies a higher status. This means that the experimenter is responsible for everything that happens. Such an internal position of a person leads to uncritical, unconditional submission to the authority of persons occupying a higher social status, even if the instructions of these persons contradict the requirements of the law, morality, and the very views and attitudes of a particular person.

Author: Lyudmila Dmitrievna Stolyarenko, PhD in Psychology, PhD in Philosophy, Professor at the Department of Pedagogy of the Higher School of the South Russian State Technical University.

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