Understanding Human Communication

318 PART THREE COMMUNICATION IN GROUPS
CULTURAL IDIOM
off the wall: unconventional,
ridiculous
go along with the crowd: agree
with the majority
rock the boat: disturb a stable
condition
Conformity and Nonconformity:
Long and Short Views
When we look a little closer, we see
an inconsistency in the way our
society seems to feel about
conformity (team playing) and
nonconformity (deviance). For
example, one of the great best-sellers
of the 1950s was a book by John F.
Kennedy called Profiles in Courage,
wherein the author praised several
politicians for their courage in
resisting great pressure and refusing
to conform. To put it another way,
Kennedy was praising people who
refused to be good team players,
people who refused to vote or act as
their parties or constituents expected
them to. Although their actions earned
Kennedy’s praise long after the deeds
were done, the immediate reactions
of their colleagues were generally far
from positive. The nonconformist may
be praised by historians or idolized in
films or literature long after the fact of
his nonconformity, but he’s usually not
held in high esteem, at the time, by
those people to whose demands he
refuses to conform.
Elliot Aronson
The Social Animal
Pressure to Conform
There’s a strong tendency for group members to go along with the crowd,
which often results in bad decisions. A classic study by Solomon Asch illustrated
this point.College students were shown three lines of different lengths and asked
to identify which of them matched with a fourth line. Although the correct answer
was obvious, the experiment was a setup: Asch had instructed all but one
member of the experimental groups to vote for the wrong line. As a result, fully
one-third of the uninformed subjects ignored their own good judgment and voted
with the majority. If simple tasks like this one generate such conformity, it is
easy to see that following the (sometimes mistaken) crowd is even more likely
in the much more complex and ambiguous tasks that most groups face.
Even when there’s no overt pressure to follow the majority, more subtle influences
motivate members—especially in highly cohesive groups—to keep quiet
rather than voice any thoughts that deviate from what appears to be the consensus.“Why
rock the boat if I’m the only dissenter?”members think.“And if everybody
else feels the same way, they’re probably right.”
With no dissent, the group begins to take on a feeling of invulnerability: an
unquestioning belief that its ideas are correct and even morally right. As its position
solidifies, outsiders who disagree can be viewed as the enemy, disloyal to
what is obviously the only legitimate viewpoint. Social scientists use the term
groupthink to describe a group’s collective striving for unanimity that discourages
realistic appraisals of alternatives to its chosen decision. 43 Several group practices
can discourage this troublesome force. 44 A first step is to recognize the prob-
Source: THEFARSIDE © 1984 FARWORKS, INC. Used by permission. All Rights Reserved.