Attitudinal Conformity and Anonymity

Past research has shown that surveillance, unanimity of others, and ambiguous stimuli all contribute to conformity. This study sought to determine whether people will conform to a group they identify with even in the absence of all three contributing conditions. Using college students as subjects, the researcher posed as a pollster asking for responses to six statements on public issues. The falsified results of an earlier "national college sample" were used as the majority consensus stimulus. A written questionnaire was administered in private, and then placed in a locked ballot box. This study found no evidence of conformity, suggesting that when people have definite attitudes, and when others are not unanimous in their opinions, the social pressures produced by surveillance are necessary in order to produce conformity. Herbert L. Tyson, Jr., is a doctoral student in sociology at Michigan State University and Stan A. Kaplowitz is an Assistant Professor of sociology at Michigan State University. This article is based on a Master's thesis prepared by Herbert L. Tyson, Jr. under the guidance of Stan Kaplowitz. The authors wish to thank Thomas L. Conner, Joseph Woelfel, and Toba Kaplowitz for their helpful comments. POQ 41 (1977) 226-234 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.115 on Sat, 08 Oct 2016 06:19:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ATTITUDINAL CONFORMITY AND ANONYMITY 227 and stimulus ambiguity contribute to conformity. Our central question is this. Will people conform even if none of these contributing conditions is present? What might cause conformity even in the absence of the contributing conditions? According to Kelman (1958), people find it satisfying to have the same beliefs and attitudes as those they identify with. Two points should be made clear, however. First, we are not restricting the concept of "identification" to situations in which the subject is strongly attached to others. It may be sufficient that the subject regard the others as "regular folk, just like me." What is essential is that the subject not see the others as distinctly different from him/herself and not evaluate them negatively. We would not, for example, expect blacks to conform to views attributed to members of the Ku Klux Klan. Secondly, we are not asking whether attitudes can be influenced through the process of identification. We are asking whether identification leads to attitudinal conformity even in the absence of any of our contributing conditions. To sum up, we are testing two competing hypotheses. One is the surveillance-unanimity-ambiguity hypothesis, which holds that at least one of those three conditions must be satisfied in order for there to be conformity. Alternatively, we have the identification-conformity hypothesis, which states that even in the absence of any of the three facilitating conditions, people will conform to a group they identify with. Several studies have attempted to remove the conditions which facilitate conformity, but in our view, none has totally succeeded in removing all three. More specifically, none has simultaneously created a feeling of complete anonymity and one of nonambiguity. Deutsch and Gerard (1955) and Hardy (1957) found some conformity on unambiguous stimuli even in the private response condition. Deutsch and Gerard found, however, that some of the subjects in the private condition did not perceive that condition as anonymous. Despite the fact that their decisions were not announced, they thought that others would be able to determine them. Hardy does not make a similar admission, but his procedure does not appear to protect the subjects' privacy any more than does the Deutsch and Gerard procedure. A study which appears to provide more privacy than either the Deutsch and Gerard or Hardy studies is one by Walker and Heyns (1967: Ch. 3). In this study, each subject was asked to evaluate several different organizations and was provided, in writing, with the ostensible opinions of most members of some collectivity to which she belonged (either University of Michigan students, University of Michigan sorority members, or members of her own sorority). While the experiment write-up does not make this explicit, it appears that other members of this collectivity were not physically present and were not going to be informed of the subject's responses. This study also showed conformity. But even if the subject's privacy was protected from those she was conThis content downloaded from 207.46.13.115 on Sat, 08 Oct 2016 06:19:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 228 TYSON AND KAPLOWITZ forming to, there is still another source of social pressure. In neither this study nor any of the others mentioned is the subject's response kept secret from the experimenter. Since it appears that subjects want to be positively evaluated by the experimenter (Orne, 1962) the subject may conform because he/she thinks that the experimenter expects and/or wants conformity. (Allen, 1965:169). The study which comes closest to providing complete anonymity is Argyle (1957). In Argyle's private condition, the subject's final opinion was put in a sealed envelope and he was told that the experimenter would never personally see the response. But the task was judging the quality of a painting which was, in Argyle's words, "deliberately chosen for its ambiguous character." Hence, this study, which also showed conformity, eliminated surveillance but not ambiguity. Our study presented subjects with nonambiguous stimuli and with the ostensible views of a group which did not have unanimity. In addition, our procedure was designed to eliminate the social pressures produced by surveillance more completely than in any study we are aware of. First, the group whose opinions the subjects were informed of was not physically present. Second, the subjects responded on a secret ballot so that the experimenter would not be able to identify their responses. In addition, the subjects were not even aware that they were in an experiment, hence their actions should not have been motivated by a desire to confirm the experimenter's hypothesis.