Conformity on Stereotypes and Prejudices

Team - Himanth Nersu, Santhosh A, Satya Abhiram Theli

Introduction:

• Conformity involves changing your behaviors in order to "fit in" or "go along" with the people around you. Examples of conformity are readily observable in almost every activities. A 20-year-old college student drinks at a sorority party because all his friends are doing it and he does not want to be the odd one out. Another example in the corporate world be the office attire. A popular survey conducted in 2011 found that roughly 15 percent of employers plan to relax their dress codes. While some employers are implementing casual work environments, many employers conform to traditional dress codes such as those found in banks, law offices and other professional services firms.
• If your answer to the question "Do whites have a better chance of winning the US elections?" is "Yes", then it is a perfect example of Stereotyping. Stereotypes are assumptions made about a group of people and are applied to individuals irrespective of their personal characteristics because of their affiliation with said group. Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or neutral, but no matter the type, it's important to use extreme caution around stereotypes, especially in the workplace.
• Prejudice is usually referred to as a negative attitude, especially when it is a hatred towards certain kinds of people. Some common examples are: In the United States, black people could not sit in the front of buses or use the same water fountains as white people until the 1950s and 1960s; Assumptions that someone who is physically disabled is also mentally disabled; Reluctance of parents to approve their children marrying anyone of a different religion. 

Motivation:

• Stereotyping and Prejudicing are pretty much similar in their own terms and occur mostly because of social influence.
• In some cases, this social influence might involve agreeing with or acting like the majority of people in a specific group, or it might involve behaving in a particular way in order to be perceived as "normal" by the group.
• This motivated us to the study of effects of conformity on Stereotyping and Prejudicing nature of people.

Approach:

• We did a questionnaire survey on IIT Patna student community to study the effects of conformity.
• The questions revolved around gender/religious/racial profiling. The questions were framed to assess the stereotyping and prejudicing nature of the people who took the survey.
• One set (A) of people were told about previous responses of the same survey. These responses were purposefully framed to make-believe the people of A that a vast majority (or the minority, in few questions) of the people hold negative stereotypes or prejudices.
• Another set (B) of people were asked the questions directly.

Survey Responses:

The analyses in better resolution can be found here.

Conclusion:

• The responses from set B were found to be in accordance with the information about the previous survey.
• More people from set B tend to show stronger stereotyping and prejudicing behavior than set A
• This shows the influence of conformity on peoples’ social behavior.
• A vast percentage of people discriminate only as a result of social influence.
• A possible reason for this can be that people who are high in the desire for control are less likely to conform than people low in the desire for control due to their feeling that they will be relinquishing control over events in their lives if they conform.