Conformity Essay
My Conformity Observation Essay was done for my Social Psychology college class. Conformity is when people change their behavior in accordance with socially accepted conventions or standards. We had to observe conformity in a place that interact with people all the time and I choose Kihei Charter classrooms. Conformity takes place everyday and its interesting to see when it takes place when you are actively trying to find examples of it happening. The 21st century skill that embodies this project is communication skills because it is all about communicating the purpose of your project in many different ways. My essay displays many different examples of conformity taking place at Kihei Charter and can be communicated with many different audiences like college professors, students, and the public.
Conformity in a High School Classroom
Troy A. Begley
Department of Psychology, University of Maui Hawaii
PSY 250: Social Psychology
Paul Thornton PhD
September 26, 2021
Conformity at a High School Classroom
Conformity is a change in a person’s behavior to fit in or to obtain correct information (Mallinson & Hatemi, 2018). Conformity involves changing your behavior based on influence from others. This happens a lot during a person’s high school years as they are so desperate to fit in and be included. Conformity happens when others have greater experience or knowledge or change their behavior to avoid looking foolish. High school students do this to fit in or make themselves look good.
The study I conducted was a participant observation as I was a part of the study and noticing people conforming to my behaviors as well as myself conforming to behaviors and two other people conforming to one another. I was working overtly as I didn’t disguise myself but I didn’t let them know I was observing them because I feared they would change their behavior. I was event sampling as I only needed to observe events when someone conformed to another’s behavior.
While I was observing my peers and friends, I was surprised how much conformity takes place where I go to school and how it happened in the simplest situations. I also noticed that the people who were not as experienced conformed a lot to the people who were known for being smart or known for being cool. If a person was known for a certain quality or trait the person would likely conform to their behavior.
Throughout the school day, I observed situations where I noticed conformity taking place. My precalculus class was the first time I saw conformity taking place. When one of the students who is known for getting A’s on tests would provide an answer most of the class would agree with them. In particular, the people who are known to struggle with school and math would almost immediately agree. This was an example of informational conformity, (Sun and Yu, 2013) this takes place when a person lacks information and looks to the group for said information. The search for information and to be right is deep-rooted within us. People agree with one another to obtain information they believe is correct and since the person had a good reputation they thought it would be accurate. (Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004) There is a desire by humans to make the right choice and humans will almost always give in to that desire. If someone thinks that a person is right, they will agree with them because of this desire and if they are both wrong there is no harm done to their reputation. This is one of the clearest examples of conformity I could find throughout my observations. Once one person agreed with them then it was a domino effect and by then nearly the entire class agreed. Despite the person being wrong the class constantly agreed with them based on their reputation. They were known for being knowledgeable causing the class to think they knew more about the subject than they did.
During my next class, I also saw a lot of conformity take place. During this class, we had to interact with different groups and present our ideas for our senior projects. I saw how people changed how they presented themselves and their projects based on who they were presenting to. The group I was a part of was known for voicing their opinions and being honest. I noticed that people changed how their presentations. When I was observing them present to a group that wasn’t mine their presentation was different as they were adapting to each group. I also did this when I was presenting to the different groups. With one group I was more laid back when I noticed the group was not paying attention or lounging around the classroom. With another group, I was more direct when I noticed they were taking notes and sitting up straight. I also noticed that when one person started taking notes the entire class started to take notes. According to Chartrand & Bargh (1999) “Researchers find that this mimicking increases the connection between people and allows our interactions to flow more smoothly.”(p.39) A person will mimic someone else to connect with people much like someone would change how they present themselves and their project to different people.
In conclusion, in a high school classroom conformity takes place quite frequently. High school students are an interesting group when observing conformity. Many teenagers are very desperate to fit in and not be embarrassed. You can see this a lot in my observations as people would conform to fit in and not show their weaknesses’. In my examples, people were worried about their answers being wrong they just agreed with the person who was known for being smart. People also change their behavior based on the group. Conformity is an interesting topic and it is very prominent in society as each person wants to be a part of a group and have a good reputation.
References
Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. (1999). The chameleon effect: The perception-behavior link and social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 893–910.
Cialdini, R. B., & Goldstein, N. J. (2004). Social Influence: Compliance and conformity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55(1), 591–621.
Mallinson, D. J., & Hatemi, P. K. (2018). The effects of information and social conformity on Opinion Change. PloS one. Retrieved September 26, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5931497/.
Yu, R., & Sun, S. (2013). To conform or not to conform: Spontaneous conformity diminishes the sensitivity to monetary outcomes. PLoS ONE, 8(5). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064530