Influences of Conformity and Obedience

The social influence that involves changes in a person's belief or behavior so that he/she can fit into a group is known as conformity. Obedience is seen as a means of a person following the rules. Conformity and obedience are social influences that can strongly affect a person's behavior in different social situations. Some ways of conformity and obedience can be something as simple as a person following the social norms such as a person following the social norms such as a fashion trend or unwritten statements being made. If a person commits an immoral act because of another person's direction who seems to be in a position of authority can also be a variation of conformity and obedience.

Conformity and Obedience

Conformity is how a person can change his/her behavior and paradigm to meet that standard of the social norms. Based on experiments, when a person is confronted by social norms, he/she will adjust the ways of his/her paradigm and behaviors in order to become more closely to the perceived norm (Asch, 1951; Aarts & Dijkisterhuis, 2003). Based in the experiments of Aarts and Dijksterhuis the participants were provided with the normal behavior how a situation can occur within a library and the place the same participants at a railway station. Asch provides the suggestion that within that group setting the size of the group, the role of an ally and the magnitude of group error all influence our perceptions. Once placed in the location the participant began to remain silent in an unconscious activated from being in or presented with the scene from view of the library.

Obedience is the acts in accordance with rules and order (Ruber, Ruber, & Allen, 2004). In conformity the experiments that have been studied shows that electric shock was used as a means of increasing a person's strength to a learner process and applied whenever a participant would make a mistake on the memory task. From this the experimenter would pre-arrange stock sentences for the participants in order to continue on with the experiment.

Similarities

The two concepts of obedience and conformity are interrelated and share a number of similarities. Conformity shows an improvement within the person's inter-personal attitude and behavior. When a person shows attention to an incidental situation he/she are able to have compliance with being obedient to others around him/her and improve the person's friendship with other people. Obedience and conformity are similar based on the foot-to-door approach by the participants committing a small act and accepting a sample of a situation, which will show that the person can comply with the request of the process during the situation. Obedience and conformity are the effects of informational social influences that can occur with participants with an experiment. When a person begins to confirm the results are based on the informational social influences and studies that can provide evidence on the normative focus of the theory's experiment that can have a significant correlation to the person having conformity. In the experiment process an obedient person with destructive commands tend to decrease greatly of the person is shown that the responsibility of the weight is on his/her shoulder (Hamilton, 1978). When a person steps outside of his/her social expected behavior, the intended responses of obedience and compliance can begin to be considered as the same thing, while the person or participant complies with the request and the obedience is the order.

Differences

The main difference between obedience and conformity is that one is a request, a question and the other is a direct command. One can invite a person to decline or carry out the command with the social expectation of being obedient. Conformity is affected by the way the question is orientated to the individual or situation. When looking at obedience it is not likely to be affected by any particular factors. The perception and behaviors of the majority of people are likely to be more accurate and conducive to the survival of the people than it would be for an individual or a minority.

Effects of group influence on the self is if the person's conformity is affected by the culture in question or to the individual or collective mean of understanding the next person. Based on research the impact has revealed an interesting trend that focuses on the peer association that is constructed in order to aid with organizational and formal affiliations (Feldman and Newcomb, 1969). Despite the information from the general census, a peer group and friendship inter-personal groups played a vital role in how people socialize with one another and how the majority of the people within the group come from multi-groups of ethnic descent and had operational parts within the groups as an individual difference.

From this study a person can demonstrate the influence to friends and others as well as not having contextual influences. From the social group setting a consensual set of norms are developed and is done through interpersonal interaction. The individual begins to change under the pressure of the approval or disapproval of the values of others and his/her peers. The process of peer influences is distinct in the way it refers to other members within the group or setting. The effect of self on the process involves the development of interpersonal interaction as being the primary contribution to the overall development of person and who he/she is to become (Hallinan, 1983).

When involved in a group or session a person can continually act and react to the environment and have his/her struggles to establish his/her identity (Erikson, 1968). The person within the peer group can have an influence over the effects of the peer environment on any given situation and the intellectual self-concept for his/her aspiration. Self-evaluations are based upon a person's position in comparison to other members within the setting or group. When a person takes into account the situation, a person will begin to form judgments of his/her abilities.

Conformity and obedience have some aspects that are common, there are more that are similar to specific compliances that obedience has than those of