Have you ever felt pressured by society to fit in or even to stand out in a crowd of people with the same ideas?

If you answered “yes” to this, you are not alone as seventy-five percent of people have conformed at least once in their lives, according to Soloman Asch’s conformity experiment.

Conformity is defined by Dictionary.com as: “compliance with standards, rules or laws.” Throughout history and all over the world, conformity has caused people to behave and think in a similar way throughout the world. This has limited us as a species because it has caused us to comply with many close-minded perspectives on life. 

Throughout American history, the nation has been one that leans on conformity by its people. Sure the nation did not conform to the British Empire’s rule of control, but societally it followed a strict code of behavior. No matter the age, it seemed that the vast majority of people followed the standard norms of the time. From the dress to gender roles, people conformed. Nowhere was this more common than in the gender norms where men work and women stay at home with the kids. These norms in society created an expectation for each and every human being. That expectation led to people who did escape the conformity to be looked down upon by society.

Some might say that people stuck in the cycle of conformity are essentially imprisoned and lack any freedom to explore their true selves. However, many people throughout history have escaped the process of societal norms and found ways to be free. George M. Welling from The University of Groningen in the Netherlands speaks about some of those people “Culture of the 1950s.” Welling talks about the 1950s in the U.S. as a time when conformity took a hit, when people like Elvis Presley, Jason Pollock, Jack Kerouac, and more, stood out and chose to cast aside societal norms. He writes, “Tennessee singer Elvis Presley popularized black music in the form of rock and roll and shocked more staid Americans with his ducktail haircut and undulating hips. In addition, Elvis and other rock and roll singers demonstrated that there was a white audience for black music, thus testifying to the increasing integration of American culture.” Not only did Elvis Presley break out of societal norms, but he also changed how black music could be listened to by white people. He destroyed stereotypes and was a way for people to come together.

In “How Conformity Can Be Good and Bad for Society,” Zaid Jilani from the University of California, Berkeley talks about the polarization of conformity and how it influences people to conform to a popular idea through information, corroboration, and social comparison. Jilani quotes legal scholar Cass Sunstein from his new book Conformity: The Power of Social Influences. Jilani observes that “deep implications for political polarization” result from conformity. He quotes legal scholar Cass Sunstein’s new book Conformity: The Power of Social Influences, where its author observed that “like-minded people go to extremes” due to three factors: “information, corroboration, and social comparison.” These three factors are major contributors to conformity, and they tend to be the reasons people might change their opinions to fit into a group.

Jilani states, “If you are in a social group whose members tend to be opposed to abortion rights, it’s unlikely that you will ever hear any argument in favor of these rights. With your limited information, you are more likely to move in the direction of opposing abortion rights rather than supporting them.” Lack of information and prior knowledge on a subject might force someone to conform to a group of people that have certain experiences on a subject for the three reasons named by Sunstein, namely information, corroboration, and social comparison. This is a common way to manipulate people into believing something they might otherwise not have believed if they had prior knowledge of it.

Society throughout history has been filled with people that didn’t “fit in.” For some reason, those are the people that have made the most impact on our lives because they weren’t afraid to innovate, influence, and stand out among the crowd. Even to this day, we have all types of people trying to push to be more uniform whether it be friends, family, or media. Parents and teachers need to promote more individualism among their children. Allowing them to think for themselves and make their own decisions is the only way we will end the cycle.