Before elucidating on the topic “conformity versus obedience to authority,” it is wise to understand the meaning of “social influence.” The term ‘social influence’ encompasses all the changes in how someone behaves, thinks, or acts as a result of interacting with another individual (s). The changes come about as a result of persuasion. Social influence can be as a result of acts that are intentional persuasion or some other times are unintentional. Conformity is the tendency of someone to assume same behaviors, attitudes, and believes of group members she/he is trying to blend in while obedience is the predisposition of to follow orders from the authority without asking questions (Burger, 2018). Similar to the societal norms, conformity and obedience to authority play a crucial role in social influence. This paper offers thorough elucidation that conformity is the stronger social influence when compared to obedience to authority.
Often, we adjust our behaviors and attitudes so that they are equivalent to other people’s behaviors and attitudes. Firstly, we adjust mainly because of the worry of what the other people are thinking about us. A good example is a study conducted on college students that showed that the students would rather give a wrong interpretation on a visual test than go against what the group has deduced (Burger, 2018) . Secondly, we agree with the conventional norm simply because some individuals already possess the information that we don’t have, therefore, it acts as a reasonable strategy to conform more so in the scenario where we are not sure the conventional way upon which to act.
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On the other hand, obedience to the authority sometimes leads to disturbing behavior. For instance, where an instructor directs the students to electric shock another individual in a psychology experiment and the participants continues to administer the electric shocks as directed by the instructor despite the person protesting, is a good example of blind obedience to authority (Burger, 2018) . Such behaviors of obeying the authority blindly, as experienced in atrocities and genocides, raise questions on the power of authority figures. Additionally, they raise questions on the ethical breaches undertaken when participants are subjected to torturous psychology experiments. In the scenario, social influence plays no role at all. Rather, students act as they are instructed by the experimenter.
Overall, in conformity, individual work hard to blend in out of fear of social disapproval, while in obedience it is simply out of fear (sometimes respect) to those in authority. Conformity thus is more inclined to occur due to social influence and pressure whereas obedience involves some power or hierarchy element more so acting to satisfy directives from an individual in a position of authority than social influences.
Reference
Burger, J. (2018). Conformity and Obedience . [online] Noba. Available at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/conformity-and-obedience [Accessed 8 Sep. 2018].
