Culture and Conformity

Abstract

This article will focus on culture and conformity. Societies desire and work to achieve cultural conformity within their population as a means of promoting harmony, diminishing social unrest, eliciting agreement and cooperation, and ensuring the reproduction of cultural norms and values in the future. This article explores the sociology of culture and conformity in four parts: an overview of the basic principles and mechanisms of cultural conformity; a description of the socialization process; a discussion of the ways in which sociologists study cultural conformity; and an explanation of the issues associated with nonconformity. Understanding the role that culture and conformity play in social life is vital background for all those interested in the sociology of culture and social influence.

Overview

Culture is the mechanism through which societies promote and achieve conformity of behavior, dress, language, expectations, and laws. Culture includes the collection of customs, attitudes, values, and beliefs that characterizes one group of people and distinguishes them from other groups. Culture is passed from one generation to succeeding generations through immaterial culture, such as values, norms, language, rituals, and symbols, and material culture, such as objects, art, and institutions. Societies desire and work to achieve cultural conformity within their populations as a means of promoting harmony, diminishing social unrest, eliciting agreement and cooperation, and ensuring the reproduction of cultural norms and values in the future. Conformity refers to a change in an individual's behavior made in response to a real or imagined external influence.

The socialization process, in particular, creates conformity by conveying society's values, norms, and laws to the individual. Socialization refers to the process of transmitting one's cultural values and norms to one's children. The socialization process occurs in two interconnected ways: family socialization and cultural socialization (Romero, et al., 2000). Understanding the role that culture and conformity play in social life is vital background for all those interested in the sociology of culture and social influence. This article explores the sociology of culture and conformity in four parts:

An overview of the basic principles of cultural conformity;

A description of the socialization process;

A discussion of the ways in which sociologists study cultural conformity; and

An explanation of the issues associated with nonconformity.

Cultural Conformity. Conformity refers to the adapting of an individual's behavior in response to a real or imagined external influence. Types of conformity include public and private conformity. Conformity is influenced by the unanimity, decisiveness, and cooperation of the group (Asch, 1956). Private conformity refers to instances in which individuals change their private beliefs in response to the position of others. Public conformity refers to instances in which individuals display a superficial change of opinions in response to external pressure.

Conformity may occur in response to an informational influence or a normative influence. Informational social influences produce conformity through the need for and spread of information. Experts of all kinds exert informational influence on society. Informational social influence often results in private conformity in which individuals internalize expert opinions and beliefs. Normative social influences produce conformity through fear of social embarrassment. Individuals experiencing a normative influence conform to escape the potential negative consequences of deviant behavior. Normative influence is strongly affected by the size of the group and the unanimity of group opinion. Individuals resist normative social influence through self-awareness and like-minded peers or role models.

Groups most likely to conform include adolescents, women, people with low self-esteem, and collectivist cultures. Factors that affect conformity include gender, group cohesion, reinforcement, social approval, cultural norms, values, and psychological disposition (Endler, et al., 1973). Different cultures facilitate and promote different levels of conformity. For instance, collectivist cultures, such as those found in Asian, Latin American, and African nations, promote and value high levels of conformity. In contrast, individualistic cultures, such as those found in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, tend to value individuality and allow some degree of cultural transgression and rebellion. Social science research has demonstrated that individuals from collectivist cultures value and display conformity more than individuals from individualistic cultures (Cinnirella & Green, 2007).

Socialization. Cultural socialization, which refers to the process of transmitting cultural values and norms to one's children, is the mechanism that teaches and produces cultural conformity. Socialization, which shapes individuals and social groups alike, is a subject of particular interest to psychologists and sociologists. Sources of socialization include family, peers, school, work, community, media, legal system, and cultural belief system. In some instances, as in the case of immigrant families, individuals can be socialized partially or completely into two or more cultures. Individuals socialized into two cultures are considered to be bicultural (Romero, et al., 2000).

For many individuals and cultures, families serve as the primary source of socialization. Families, both primary and extended, transmit individual and group values to the next generation of adults. In 1955, sociologists Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales published a book titled Family, Socialization and Interaction Process, which provided a functionalist explanation for the family socialization process. The family's functions included the socialization of children and the stabilization of adult personality. According to Parsons and Bales, the nuclear family, with its gender-based social roles, functioned to support the economy and society, and the marriage becomes the source of feminine and masculine role socialization. The family socialization process does not stop after childhood. For instance, marriage and parenting socialize adults through expectations, impulse control, and meaning-making.

Cultural socialization has three main goals:

• Impulse control;
• Role preparation and performance; and
• Meaning-making.

Examples of social roles include occupational roles and gender roles. Meaning-making refers to the adoption of shared cultural symbols (Arnett, 1995). Human society depends on the successful belief in and reproduction of shared cultural symbols. Shared symbols, which require a high level of conformity to be effective, facilitate communication and cultural reproduction over time. Conformity-enhancing or enforcing symbols include shared values, norms, and material objects.

Values. Values refer to intangible qualities or beliefs accepted and endorsed by a given society. Values are distinct from attitudes, traits, norms, or needs. Values share the following characteristics and qualities:

• Values tend to be unobservable;
• Values tend to be confused with other social and psychological phenomena; and
• Values tend to have historical and cultural variability.

Values express an idealized state of being. Examples of modern US values include achievement; success; independence; freedom; democracy; scientific discovery; progress; comfort; education; and ideas of racial, sexual, religious, or gender superiority. Values influence individual and group action. Sociologists study the mechanisms through which values inspire, motivate, and influence action in and by society. Sociologists have found that values must be activated in individual and group consciousness to effect action. Values, once activated, lead toward the privileging of certain actions over others. Values affect attention, perception, and interpretation within situations and ultimately direct the planning of individual and group action. Sociologists study how individuals learn values. Sociology has speculated that an individual's values, shaped through late adolescence, tend to be stable throughout life (Hitlin & Piliavin, 2004).

Norms. Norms refer to conditions for social relations between groups and individuals, for the structure of society and the difference between societies, and for human behavior in general. Norms are shared rules, customs, and guidelines that govern society and define how people should behave in the company of others. Norms guide smooth and peaceful interactions by prescribing predictable behavior in different situations. There is a definite difference and distinction between values and norms. Values are individual or, in some instances, commonly shared conceptions of desirable states of being. In contrast, norms are generally accepted prescriptions for or prohibitions against behavior, belief, or feeling. While values can be held by an individual, norms cannot and must be upheld by a group. Norms always include sanctions, but values never do. However, norms do tend to be based on common values (Morris, 1956).

Material Objects. Cultural socialization controls how members of a culture use material objects or material culture. Material objects refer to items with physical substance shaped or produced by humans. Material culture includes all past and present human-made and human-altered forms. Examples of material objects include money, skateboards, billboards, ice cream, yurts, paintings, tattoos, gardens, armor, and highways. Sociologists study material culture to gain further insight into human relationships. For example, the sociology of consumption reveals data about the relationship between material and social relationships. The sociological study of material capital produces data about the social value of objects (Dant, 2006).

Language. Sociologists also recognize that language is one of the primary ways in which cultural socialization occurs. Language shapes people's views of the world in which they live. Language permits humans to record history and accumulated knowledge, practices, and beliefs. Language defines the way people interpret their environment and reality. The sociological study of language is called sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics, a combination of linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and linguistic geography, refers to the study of language in its social contexts and the study of social life through linguistics. This subfield of sociology examines the connections between language and society (Tian, 2005). An example of a twenty-first-century addition to the sociolinguistic continuum is African American Vernacular English (AAVE) which is used by middle-class African Americans in most urban settings. Aave has its own unique grammar and vocabulary (Sidnell, n.d.)

Ultimately, cultural socialization creates cultural conformity through the transmission of shared symbols such as values, norms, material objects, and language. Socialization has numerous sources, including family, peers, school/work, community, the media, the legal system, and the cultural belief system. By the 2020s, social media, which had become increasingly accessible and popular with people of all different ages in a variety of countries, was a primary and particularly influential source of cultural socialization. Individuals and groups alike gained the ability to rapidly spread information to anyone throughout the world, and large numbers of people became dependent on this type of media for everything from news to politics; at the same time, in some cultures, the restriction of the internet and social media, specifically, were methods of effecting conformity. Cultures vary in the degree of cultural socialization transmitted to individuals and groups. The degree of cultural socialization is directly connected to the degree of desired and achieved cultural conformity.

Cultural socialization includes two types:

• Broad socialization and
• Narrow socialization.

Broad socialization refers to the transmission of a broad range of values, norms, and beliefs. Broad socialization allows for the existence and performance of individual differences, self-expression, and independence. Cultures that value and practice broad socialization tend to produce high levels of individualism and free expression in their population. In contrast, narrow socialization refers to the transmission of a small and restricted range of individual variation. Cultures that value and practice narrow socialization tend to produce high levels of obedience and conformity in their populations and discourage and punish cultural deviance (Arnett, 1995).

Applications

Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, social scientists began to study the functions, mechanisms, and parameters of cultural conformity. Social scientific research on cultural conformity is, in some instances, used within organizations to increase the potential positive aspects of group conformity, such as cooperative problem solving, and to lower the negative aspects of group conformity, such as groupthink. This section will discuss a wide range of studies on cultural conformity conducted over the last several decades.

Sociological Studies on Conformity. In the 1950s, social psychologist Solomon Asch (1907–96) performed perhaps the most well-known experiments on public conformity. He devised an experiment to test the connections between social approval, conformity, and group judgments. Asch placed a small group of individuals together and instructed participants to identify one of three lines that was the same length as a test line. Asch's experiment, which became known as the Asch line judgment study, tested whether or not individuals would conform in instances when the larger group's judgment was known to be incorrect. Ash's study participants displayed a high level of conformity even when the majority opinion was obviously incorrect or misguided. Critics of Asch's line judgment study argue that the high level of conformity seen in the study was a result of the political climate in the United States at the time. Social scientists have reproduced Asch's experiment across cultures and time periods and have not unanimously reproduced Asch's findings, suggesting that conformity may indeed be cultural and era-specific. Despite criticism, the Asch line judgment studies have influenced all subsequent studies of cultural conformity (Walker & Andrade, 1996).

Social scientists Kim and Markus studied the relationship between uniqueness and conformity in American and East Asian cultures. The researchers identified and measured individual preferences. The researchers concluded that members of American culture associate uniqueness with the American values of freedom and independence. In contrast, members of East Asian cultures associate conformity with the East Asian values of connectedness and harmony (Kim & Markus, 1999).

Social scientists Scott, Ciarrochi, and Deane (2004) studied the mental health consequences of membership in an individualistic culture with low levels of cultural conformity. Researchers asked 276 first-year Australian university students to complete a survey on individualism, social support, emotional competence, hopelessness, depression, and suicide ideation. The researchers concluded that the mental health consequences of belonging to an individualistic culture include idiocentrism and stress. People in individualistic cultures may experience small social support networks, trouble with emotions, resistance to seek help from family and friends for personal problems, mental health issues, and high levels of hopelessness. Researchers suggest that there are social psychological disadvantages and challenges to belonging to an individualistic culture that does not value cultural conformity (Scott, Ciarrochi, & Deane, 2004).

Social scientists Van lal Thanzami and John Archer developed a study to test whether people in individualistic cultures have different beliefs about aggression and gender stereotypes than people in collectivist cultures. The study participants included one hundred British Anglo-Saxon students (representing England's individualistic culture) and one hundred British Asian students (representing Asia's collectivist culture). Researchers found that cultural orientation (i.e., individualistic and independent culture versus collectivist and conformist culture) did not significantly determine an individual's beliefs about aggression and gender stereotypic traits (Thanzami & Archer, 2005).

With the advent and proliferation of social media, social psychologists began studying how social media affects conformity. There are positive and negative aspects to social media and ways in which it encourages conformity, along with ways social media promotes individualism. Social media and online communities can increase a person’s sense of belonging and perceived level of acceptance, as well as create bonding experiences. However, social media can also lead to depression and feeling outside of an online community (Berk, 2019).

Ultimately, the study of cultural conformity is undertaken as an effort to understand individual and group meaning-making. Mid-century social scientists, such as Asch, studied conformity based on people's judgments about physical reality. Contemporary social scientists are concerned with the relationship between cultural conformity, meaning, and symbols. Contemporary sociology employs a phenomenological and semiotic approach to questions of cultural conformity. In the phenomenological approach, sociologists study the subjective meanings that the researcher or interpreter attributes to cultural elements, objects, and acts. In the semiotic approach, sociologists study the meanings and definitions of symbolic designs and social texts (Kavolis, 1985).

Issues

Non-Conformity & Sanctions. Cultural conformity, as represented by social norms, is important, in part because cultural conformity enables individuals to agree on a shared interpretation of the social situation and prevent harmful social interactions. Conformity is necessary for cultural communication and cultural survival. Conformity is achieved by having all members of a group follow shared values and norms. Norms tend to be institutionalized and internalized. Most social control of individuals through norms is internal and guided by the pressures and restraints of cultural indoctrination. Individual cultures sanction their norms. Sanctions may be rewards for conformity to norms or punishment for non-conformity. Positive sanctions include rewards, praise, smiles, and gestures. Negative sanctions include the infliction of guilt, condemnation, citations, fines, and imprisonment (Opp, 1979).

Sanctions for nonconformity will vary based on the level and type of norm being violated. Sociologists divide norms into four types:

• Folkways,

• Mores,

• Taboos, and

• Laws.

These four types of norms are ranked from least restrictive to most compulsory. Folkways refer to norms that protect common conventions. Most people in a society follow traditional folkways, but failure to conform to them is considered neither illegal nor immoral. Examples of common folkways found in the United States include having turkey for Thanksgiving dinner or mowing one's lawn. Mores refer to stronger norms with associated moral values. Examples of common mores found in the United States include prohibitions against murder, multiple spouses, or desecration of religious symbols.

Taboos refer to the strongest types of mores. Taboos include the belief that certain activities, such as cannibalism, are outside the bounds of cultural acceptance. Violations of mores and taboos tend to be treated with strong social disapproval or criminal consequences. Laws refer to the mores that are formally enforced by political authority and backed by the power of the state (Kiesler, 1967).

As a result of the importance of norm following and cultural conformity, non-conforming individuals and groups may be shunned and punished. When individuals transgress against existing cultural norms, they are engaging in a norm violation and will be classified as non-conformists. Norm violations refer to public or private instances of transgression and deviance from culturally sanctioned behaviors (Kiesler, 1967). Examples of (generalized) cultural nonconformity in American culture include extensive body work such as extensive piercing and tattoos, draft dodging, speeding, stealing, public nudity, polygamy, vandalism, and begging. Consequences for these non-conforming behaviors may include fines, prison, expulsion, disowning, unemployment, threats, and ostracization. Ultimately, conformity with group norms is influenced by numerous factors, including gender, cultural beliefs, and norms. Research demonstrates that individuals with strong moral beliefs tend to be less influenced by conformity and group norms than individuals with weaker moral beliefs (Hornsey, Majkut, Terry, & McKimmie, 2003).

While all societies develop means, such as the socialization process, of producing the desired level of cultural conformity, all societies also have individuals and groups who refuse to conform. Societies that react to non-conformity with a strong and punishing reaction often achieve compliance and obedience rather than conformity. While conformity refers to a change in an individual's behavior made in response to a real or imagined external influence, conformity differs from obedience, as conformity is not elicited by either orders or coercion. Obedience refers to rule-following behavior born of a fear of external authority. Compliance refers to mindless or unexamined cooperation and conformity (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004).

Conclusion

In the final analysis, conformity is a form of social influence exerted by society to maintain harmony and control. Cultural conformity is created through the socialization process and the adoption of shared values, norms, mores, and language. This article explored the sociology of culture and conformity in four parts: an overview of the basic principles and mechanisms of cultural conformity; a description of the socialization process; a discussion of the ways in which sociologists study cultural conformity; and an explanation of the issues associated with nonconformity. Understanding the role that culture and conformity play in social life is vital background for all those interested in the sociology of culture and social influence.

Terms & Concepts

Collectivist Culture: Cultures that value collective efforts and conformity.

Compliance: Mindless or unexamined cooperation and conformity.

Conformity: A change in an individual's behavior made in response to a real or imagined external influence.

Culture: The set of customs, attitudes, values, and beliefs that characterize one group of people and distinguish them from other groups.

Individualistic Culture: Cultures that value independence and self-expression.

Mores: Strong norms with associated moral values.

Norms: Shared rules, customs, and guidelines that govern society and define how people should behave in the company of others.

Obedience: Rule-following behavior born of a fear of external authority.

Sanctions: Rewards for conformity to norms or punishment for non-conformity.

Social Influence: External influence that shapes social behavior.

Socialization: The process of conveying norms and values to the young in a society.

Society: A group of people living and interacting in a defined area, such as a country or other geographic region, and sharing a common culture.

Sociology: The scientific study of human social behavior, human association, and the results of social activities.

Values: Intangible qualities or beliefs accepted and endorsed by a given society.

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Suggested Reading

Fessler, D. (2004). Shame in two cultures: Implications for evolutionary approaches. Journal of Cognition & Culture, 4(2), 207–262. Retrieved October 6, 2008, from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=14222223&site=ehost-live.

Gouveia, V., de Albuquerque, F., Clemente, M., & Espinosa, P. (2002). Human values and social identities: A study in two collectivist cultures. International Journal of Psychology, 37(6), 333–342. Retrieved October 7, 2008, from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=9060525&site=ehost-live.

Quek, K., & Knudson-Martin, C. (2006). A push toward equality: Processes among dual-career newlywed couples in collectivist culture. Journal of Marriage & Family, 68(1), 56–69. Retrieved October 7, 2008, from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier.http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=19406580&site=ehost-live.