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Contents
- Abstract
- Review of Studies on Culture and Conformity
- Comparisons Across Cultures
- Comparisons Within a Culture at Different Periods in Its History
- Summary and Implications
- Individualism–Collectivism
- Moderator Variables
- Type of Group Pressure Paradigm
- Size of Majority
- Relation of the Participant to the Majority
- Anonymity of Response
- Stimulus Materials
- Gender of Participants
- Method
- Literature Search
- Coding of Variables
- Computation and Analysis of Effect Sizes
- Results
- Study Characteristics
- Effect Sizes
- Impact of Moderator Variables on Conformity: U.S. Studies
- Cultural Values and Conformity
- Relations Between Measures of Cultural Values
- Discussion
- Summary of Findings
- Limitations of This Review
- Theoretical Implications
- Appendix AP-A
- Appendix AP-B
Figures and Tables
Abstract
A meta-analysis of conformity studies using an Asch-type line judgment task (1952b, 1956) was conducted to investigate whether the level of conformity has changed over time and whether it is related cross-culturally to individualism–collectivism. The literature search produced 133 studies drawn from 17 countries. An analysis of U.S. studies found that conformity has declined since the 1950s. Results from 3 surveys were used to assess a country's individualism–collectivism, and for each survey the measures were found to be significantly related to conformity. Collectivist countries tended to show higher levels of conformity than individualist countries. Conformity research must attend more to cultural variables and to their role in the processes involved in social influence.
The view has long been held that conformity is to some extent a product of cultural conditions, and it is a stable feature of popular stereotypes that some national groups are conforming and submissive, whereas others are independent and self-assertive (e.g., Peabody, 1985). Likewise, the extent to which dissidence is tolerated in a society will vary at different points in its history, and several commentators have suggested that the relatively high levels of conformity found in experiments conducted in the early 1950s (notably Asch, 1952b, 1956) was in part a product of the McCarthy era (e.g., Larsen, 1974; Mann, 1980; Perrin & Spencer, 1981).
Although Asch's (1952b, 1956) seminal research is often interpreted as demonstrating that conformity is fundamental to group processes (Friend, Rafferty, & Bramel, 1990), Asch...