Social Conformity: Factors that Affect Taiwanese Students’ Decision the Most

Social conformity is a phenomenon that people tend to comply with specific norms in social interactions, especially when being in a group.

This behavior often occurs without practical requirement, while people would give up their own minds and follow the current mainstream. Opposing to individualism celebrated in Western culture, some scholars claimed that collectivism is the major factor that would put an impact on the occidental students (Bond and Smith 124–25). This research is aimed at observing if this underlying difference would influence Taiwanese students’ inclination of conformity in social conditions. The plausible factors that affect the social conformity among people will be closely examined. Previous related researches would be cited, meanwhile the statistics collected by a designed questionnaire would be included as well. The two pieces of information would be utilized to observe if the outcome corresponds to the former prediction.

Based on previous researches, there are two main types of social conformity–normative conformity and informative conformity (Mallinson and Hatemi 1–2). To start with, normative conformity is regarded as people are inclined to conform to groups or situations in order to be liked and accepted by others. This phenomenon could be embodied by Asch’s prestigious experiment of how group pressure transforms into a formidable social force that influences people’s decision when facing contradictory circumstances.

Asch claimed that, based on his result, people would conform to the group when his perspective is not in line with the majority of people.

The experiment suggests that group pressure is the major causation of normative conformity, owing to the avoidance of the plausible sanction of the majority, people are inclined to shun the possibility of holding a divergent perspective. Furthermore, Bond and Smith have launched Asch’s experiment with subjects from different cultures, and Chinese, the representative of oriental culture, possess higher ratio of conformity (118).

The another type is that, people would perform conformity owing to the desire to “be correct” (Sherif et al.). In the famous autokinetic effect experiment, Sherif claimed that people would conform to the norm of a group when the situation is ambiguous based on their craving of being right. When confronting an unfavorable condition, the subjects were tend to rely on others’ guidance, rather than demonstrating his own individual opinion.

In addition to the aforementioned main factors that would lead people to conformity, there are several elements which play indispensable roles on the this social behavior as well. To illustrate, the important others in life and the implicit cultural impact (Latané 343–56). People may alter their decision in order to meet their important others, such as their families, beloveds, or soulmates’ expectations. They cannot stand the social pressure of upsetting the people they care about, so they would choose to comply with the norms that are not their first choices, even though their important others did not ask them to do so.

On the other hand, cultural factor is the most implicit but formidable force of the causation of conformity. Triandis stated that people in society of collectivism are more likely to make decisions in favor of their collective objective:

…[I]n collectivist culture, social behavior is determined largely by goals shared with some collective, and if there is a conflict between personal and collective goals, it is considered socially desirable to place collective goals ahead of personal goals. (42)

This inclination based on cultural value differences is discussed comprehensively, but little do people know or discuss to which extent of this underlying factor influences Taiwanese, thus, I will cover this by collecting questionnaires among the Taiwanese college students, and launch further analysis based on the collected statistics to see if the result corresponds to the prediction of the previous research evidences.

The questionnaire is divided into 3 parts, including degree questions, multiple choice, and short answer question. 165 Taiwanese college students, whose ages ranging from 18 to 22, were recruited to participate in this survey, including 127 from National Taiwan University and 38 from other universities across Taiwan, such as National Chung Kung University, National Taiwan Arts University, and National Tsing Hua University etc. The following 5 histograms are the result of the degree questions.

Degree Questions

Fig. 1. This histogram shows that most subjects would insist on their own opinions, not following the current stream blindly.

This question is designed to perceive if people’s important others would put an impact on their decisions.

Comparing to the former statistics, people who initially have no specific inclination (category 3) would prone to insist more on their opinion (category 4), or compromise to their own viewpoint (category 2).

Fig. 3.

This question was designed to see if Sherif’s claim of “the desire to be right” would influence the behavior of conformity in Taiwanese students. People would often perceive the most prevailing thought among us is the correct one, and this phenomenon is deduced as “mere exposure effect” (Zajonc 224–25). However, the statistics demonstrates that, most young Taiwanese students do not agree with this belief, and even violently oppose to this assertion, for 86 students marked disagree and totally disagree to this statement.

Fig. 4.

According to Schatcher, for most of the people, the cohesive status of a group is the utmost goal to fulfill (190–207). In order to realize this ideal status, people are prone to accept the collective thoughts of group, even though they may hold different thoughts. This histogram demonstrates that Taiwanese students, during this situation, diverge into opposing directions. However, it is noticed that although the students hold other thoughts, but they may not put it into practice to stand out and attempt to reverse the situations into the forms that are more favorable to them. The result of this question can be linked to Asch’s study that people will choose to conform in order to be like others, and this inclination is owing to the insecurity of being unique. For them, there are no similar paths to follow, and they are likely to assume that they will be alienated by the majority. Therefore, conforming to the major is their top choice.

Fig. 5. This question is aimed at examining if Taiwanese students have the awareness that oriental cultural value may be the formidable reason of the inclination of social conformity.

Surprisingly, the result turns out that these participants do possess this awareness consciously, and acknowledge this phenomenon to a great extent, for 143 out of 165 students marked 4 and 5 for this statement.

Multiple Choices

As for the multiple choice, the participants were asked “What factors below most affect your behavior of conformity?” Every participants were allowed to select up to 2 options. This question is designed to examine what the principle issues are of this usually unconscious behavior. Below is the chart of the outcome of this session.

Fig.6. In accordance to the chart, “Do not want to be alienated by people because of my different opinion” ranks the first, and this indication corresponds again to Asch’s declaration. Social support is the main encouragement for people to sustain, so most of the people will not risk to articulate their own states, because they are fear to lose the supports they need for their social life (Cohen and Wills 310–57).

Furthermore, almost a half of the participants consider that it is the education they have received resulted in their inclination to conform. This answer shows that,

Taiwanese college students are truly aware of how the education influences people’s thoughts, and then on behaviors.

Compared with Western education style, oriental, especially Taiwanese education is examination-oriented. The education system focuses little on the imagination or the creation of students, but requires students to perform great accuracy on profound academic questions. There is always a precise solution for every question, so the flexibility of thought is neglected by most of the students in Taiwan. Thinking in a different way is a crucial deficiency for the students who receive fixed norms of knowledge, and this underlying precondition eventually limits students’ abilities to insist on and defend their own opinions. Thus, they will follow the most dominant idea, rather than carrying forward their unique thoughts. To sum up this histogram, although the important others, whose significance is emphasized by Latané, and the orientation of education are indispensable factors of Taiwanese students’ behavior of conformity, group pressure (or peer pressure) is the most crucial motive.

Short-answered Question

The last session of the questionnaire is a short-answer question–“Have you ever conformed to a group or a situation that you regretted before long? ” For this session, 67 valid responses were collected, and about 60 percent of the answers are associated with group projects during academic works. These responses can be briefly concluded that students have chosen not to speak out their own voices lest they might undermine the harmonic atmosphere of the group, so conformity was the spontaneous and heuristic method to maintain the coordination. In contrary with the occidental world, where people often place individual goals ahead of collective goals (Triandis 42), this survey serves as the evidence of the embodiment of this concept, for group harmony is the top issue for most of Taiwanese college students.

To conclude, in accordance with the statistics collected above, most Taiwanese students are aware of the collectivism value which infiltrated in the education they received, and over 40% of the subjects are convinced that this is the factor for their conformity behavior. It is for certain that collectivism truly do affect Taiwanese students decision making to some degree.

Namely, the significance of the group’s harmony they are in outweighs their own individual aspirations.

Additionally, collectivism also contributes to the subjects’ belief of valuing the opinions of other group members. The influence of group pressure will be reinforced by this value, and this may be a reasonable factor for Taiwanese students’ practices of normative conformity. Nonetheless, according to the results, one third of the subjects are convinced that they do insist on their own opinion, which indicates that Taiwanese students have their own voices. But when confronting to a situation that one’s individual viewpoint collides with that of the group, they will choose to compromise and consider the group’s benefit as priority.

Based on the outcome of the questionnaire, although the performance of this behavior is considerably affected by cultural values, it is no doubt that social conformity is a unique phenomenon for all human. No one did genuinely require people to do so, but we would perform it either consciously or unconsciously. Ultimately, it is expected that further researches could examine and identify more on the implicit factors that would put an impact on Taiwanese, even Asians, on this psychological phenomenon, since most of the researches of social conformity are usually examined through western subjects. I hope that this short paper could be an initiative and an opportunity for the further exploration of the conformity behavior among Taiwanese, in order to reveal the remaining aspects under its mysterious veil.

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Cohen, Sheldon and Thomas Wills. “Stress, Social Support, and the Buffering Hypothesis.” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 98, no. 2, 1985, pp. 310–57.

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