Policing by cultural norms (Clara B. Jones)

Policing by Cultural Norms

The power of conformity inhibits impulses to define, to name, to act contrary to the group norm. Shelby Steele writes of a conformity by blacks that “amounts to a self-protective collectivism” leading to a “diminished sense of possibility”. Steele advocates “pushing the collective identity out of our individual space” in order to utilize the classically American and middle class profile of “hard work, self-reliance, initiative, property ownership, family ties, and so on”. A problem for non-immigrant African-Americans, then (including myself), is the problem of identity. Conformity retards its solution.

I have no memory of my parents reading to me; although, I was taught to read on my own at an early age. Additionally, I have not forgotten the fairy tales my maternal grandmother read to me many years ago. They function now, as then, to create an image of reality that is more stable than uncertain. The vivid oversimplifications of fairy tales seduce my feelings through memory to construct a world without disorder, without gods, with absolute principles of right and wrong. It was for these reasons that I recalled Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes while reading Steele’s book. The fairy tale, too, was a lesson about conformity. The Emperor’s subjects complied with the opinion of others and praised his non-existent robes. The subjects of Shelby Steele’s essay conform to a political and social agenda demanding a construction of reality in which non-immigrant African-Americans are perpetually victimized by a hostile dominant culture. In both accounts, individuals modified their beliefs, attitudes, values, group-membership, and behaviors to match those of the people around them.

Social psychologists have studied conformity since the 1930s and classify it with other modes of “social influence,” interpersonal mechanisms that affect emotions, thoughts, or actions. Conformity may also require “obedience” to an authority figure (a king in Andersen’s story, political leaders in Steele’s view). In these cases, “individuality” is subordinated to group interests and norms as a result of deception, compliance, or conversion.

If conformity occurs in association with deception, the deceiver (or social parasite) may experience the “ingratiator’s dilemma” described by Edward Jones in 1990. This problem arises because deception is more likely to be detected as the motivation to deceive increases. The “ingratiator’s dilemma” formalizes the potential advantages and disadvantages of conformity, in particular, the prediction that costs increase with increases in benefits. When conformity is used to manipulate others, it may be viewed as a strategy serving the self-interests of the deceiver, and the manipulator may be expected to optimize her benefit to cost ratio. Steele does not imply that conformity by non-immigrant African-Americans is a function of deception, but it is worthy of consideration that some non-immigrant African-Americans may ingratiate others by parasitizing systems of rewards associated with the perpetuation of what Steele calls the “rhetoric” of non-immigrant African-American victimization (e.g., affirmative action, welfare, and other entitlements and incentives to conform).

Related to conformity that deceives is “compliance” in which individuals publically agree but privately disagree with a group or majority opinion, belief, or norm. The Emperor’s subjects were in compliance about his dress but did not change their personal views that the clothes were imaginary. This condition has generated classic studies by Muzafer Sherif in the 1930s and Soloman Asch in the 1950s confirming the observations of Hans Christian Andersen. Studying subjects in the laboratory, Sherif and Asch found that most subjects conformed to group opinion at least some of the time, though subsequent research has shown that the likelihood of compliance can be affected by situational variables such as group size, diversity, and the presence or absence of allies. These bodies of work lead to the conclusion that conformity among non-immigrant African-Americans is not inevitable and that the environment might be manipulated in a way that maximizes the likelihood of individual expression and autonomy (and, accountability?). Rather than popularizing athletes and entertainers, for example, the media might display black mathematicians, geneticists, IT specialists, or blue-collar workers of note.

Sherif’s studies, unlike Asch’s, were conducted under conditions of uncertainty—subjects were unclear about the correct judgment. This condition probably mimics most situations in the real world. Sherif was of the opinion that the cohesive properties of social organization are a function of conformity rather than interindividual conflicts of interest because individuals use others as social comparison to stabilize unpredictable situations. In Asch’s studies, 24% of the experimental subjects never complied, showing that individuality is not necessarily relinquished in the presence of social pressure.

Consistent with the idea that conformity may be associated with both costs and benefits, Thomas Henry Huxley stated, “If individuality has no play, society does not advance; if individuality breaks out of all bounds, society perishes.” Conformity and individuality, then, must be balanced in order to benefit social organization over the long-term. Studies are required to determine whether non-immigrant African-Americans are more likely to conform than Caucasians and, if so, what developmental factors may account for Steele’s observations? Indeed, Steele suggests that non-immigrant African-Americans are more subject to conformity than other members of society because of benefits and power associated with a collective identity based upon victimization. If this is true, then, the behaviors associated with collective responses may be very difficult to modify since they will be associated with generations of cultural conditioning, rituals, and programming.

A third form of conformity, “conversion,” occurs when individuals change their independent views and accept those of the group. The extreme political stances of some non-immigrant African-American politicians may represent such behavior. While less is known empirically about the causes and consequences of conversion compared with compliance, it is clear that for this type of conformity to operate, individuality must be subordinated to group opinion. Whereas Andersen’s fairy tale provides a measure of comfort because identity is not completely overwhelmed by group pressure, the “true believers” of Louis Farrakhan’s cabal transmit a fierce and cult-like intensity that mocks the outsider and may be threatening to him.

Asch found that conformity peaked at a group size of about 7 in which about 37.1% of all group members complied with social opinion. Several other researchers have investigated these relationships, and two theories have been proposed to explain them. The “social impact theory” of Bibb Latané and Sharon Wolf, proposed in the 1980s, holds that increasing the number of influential group members increases their stimulus value and, thus, conformity, but the cumulative rate of increase decreases over time. In Asch’s study, then, the first influential group member would have the greatest impact on the potential conformist. Group size effects would peak and, eventually, decline due to the decreasing impact of each additional social influence.

Another theory was also proposed in the 1980s by Brian Mullen, emphasizing “self-attention.” This view, which emphasizes cognitive processes, makes the same predictions as Latané and Wolf’s theory, but by different mechanisms. According to Mullen, individuals are more likely to conform when attention to their “public selves” is increased. Needs to impress others and to behave appropriately increase self-awareness in the face of social influence, decreasing the individual’s resistance to conformity as group size increases. While these theories describe certain features of conformity behavior, they do not explain why individuals comply or convert in the first place.

In the 1950s, Richard Crutchfield suggested that conformity and independence may be personality traits. Studying individuals in the laboratory, Crutchfield differentiated them according to reliable clusters of characteristics. Conforming personalities were “submissive” and “accepting”; independent types, “self-reliant.” Subsequent studies have supported Crutchfield’s findings, but methodological problems limit the power of these inferences. Nevertheless, Crutchfield’s work raises the possibility that individuals may be biologically predisposed to behave in a conforming or an independent manner since personality “traits” are thought to have a significant intrinsic, hard-wired component.

Few would argue that humans, like other social organisms, possess a need to affiliate with members of their own (and, possibly, other) species. It may be possible to trace the evolutionary origins of conformity, also. Michael Ryan has reviewed studies in which female fish and birds “copy” the mate preferences of other females of their own species, possibly because of benefits intrinsic to copying itself or because of “conspecific cueing,” a form of “social facilitation” whereby arousal and consequent performance are enhanced in the presence of other individuals. Various processes of social influence have, also, been described for non-human primates and dolphins by R.W. Byrne in his 1994 review of social learning, “imitation that could use impersonation to copy details.” If conformity in humans is evolutionarily related to (by descent or convergence) mechanisms of social influence in other species, are there advantages to lifetime survival and reproductive success (“fitness”) that continue to favor deception and cheating?

In 1995, Donelson Forsyth reviewed the three possible proximate consequences of conformity. The conformer may gain from “informational influence” in which the observation of others’ behaviors provides new information about the environment (“social” or “observational” learning). Second, “normative influence” may or may not serve the interests of the conformer who responds to social influence to comply with or convert to group norms. In the third case, “interpersonal influence” (a type of power relation), the conformer may comply or convert because of differential rewards or punishments. The study of coercion in social species is an active area of research documenting the widespread efficacy of harassment and punishment to inhibit, redirect, or otherwise modify behavior. Indeed, the avoidance of harassment, punishment or pain (“negative reinforcement”) may explain the advantages of compliance and conversion but cannot explain deception or cheating or why conformers fail to switch to another group with lower costs from social influence or conformity. Forsyth’s work reminds us that social organisms must navigate their environments via sometimes complex networks whose rules may change from space to space (as Stuart Hall has pointed out).