Behavioral Conformity Confounds Organizational Effectiveness
Article by Dr. John E. Kello
As an avid observer of human behavior, I am struck at times by the phenomena that spontaneously arise when people are merely in the presence of others. Most people think of themselves as pretty responsible, caring, altruistic, etc., and we certainly do see impressive examples from time to time in the news about great acts of heroism. But we also at times see examples of behavior that runs entirely counter to those positive values, and often it is the very people who profess to be their brother’s keeper (in the best sense) whose behavior violates those core principles. Team- concept is everywhere. Groups and teams can be very beneficial… but sometimes not so much.
While at least many of us, if not most, like to see ourselves as independent-minded, willing to stand up for what we believe, not automatically going along with the crowd, the social need to fit in and be part of the group makes behavioral conformity highly likely, even in situations where individuals protest that they are non-conformists, and even when they know they are just “going along to get along”.
Question: is behavioral conformity good or bad for organization effectiveness? Does it add value or detract from effectiveness?
Intentional Pressure to Conform
Research in social psychology reveals again and again that people are not always accurate in predicting their own behavior in social situations. They are much more influenced by others, even by the mere presence of others, than they expect. And that influence can be surprisingly negative. This doesn’t bode well for organizational effectiveness, does it?
Some of the best known and most amazing experiments conducted in the history of behavioral science were devised and carried out by the late Stanley Milgram. As you may know, especially as Milgram’s work was so widely publicized after it became known in the 1970s, he led participants in his studies to believe that they were delivering extremely painful, even debilitating electric shocks to other participants. In a rigged “learning experiment,” when a “learner” participant in another room signaled an incorrect response, the “teacher” participant was to press a button which would deliver to the learner a shock, and progressively increase the level of the shock, step by step, to a maximum of 450 volts for incorrect responses. Of course, no actual shocks were ever delivered, and the learner was in cahoots with the experimenter. The point was, the teacher was the only true subject in this ruse, and thought that he/she was really blasting “the guy in the other room.”
If the teacher expressed any concerns about whether the learner was in any danger, the experimenter, in the room with the teacher, simply told the teacher to continue with the task. If pressed, the experimenter would state that while the shocks could be extremely painful, they should not cause any permanent damage, and that the experiment “requires that you go on.”
Do you think that you would have obeyed the experimenter if you were the teacher in this situation? I’ll bet your answer is no. Most people (by far) answer “no”. Milgram himself described the procedure to some of his university classes, and to professional groups of psychologists and psychiatrists, and asked them to estimate the percentage of the true-subject “teachers” who would go all the way and administer what they believed to be a 450 volt shock – even though the learner in the other room had stopped responding at all once the shock level reached 330 volts (“no response is the same as an incorrect response,” says the experimenter). The students and the experts that Milgram sampled estimated the percentage of 450-volt shockers as between 0 – 3%. The average/mean guess of the psychologists and psychiatrists was 0.10%.
The actual number, in study after study, was around 65%. I found a YouTube clip showing a replication conducted in 2009, in the U.K. Lest you think that modern, sophisticated people are less prone to conformity and obedience, in that study 75% of the “teachers” went all the way.
Intentional pressure to conform, to obey an authority figure even when he/ she makes an unreasonable, illegitimate demand is surprisingly strong. After all, it was the boss’s decision… I was just following orders…. Blind obedience to authority can be just as dangerous as it is common. Such is the power of intentional pressure to conform. But some conformity does not require that an authority figure makes dangerous demands.
Unintentional Pressure to Conform
If you are in the presence of others, and see a potentially hazardous environmental condition, or potentially risky acts, a near-miss, an equipment malfunction, or machinery in need of repair, are you likely to speak up? This is what organizational effectiveness demands. But there are barriers. What if your boss says, “don’t worry about it – it’s OK...”? Even with that intentional pressure to conform and let it go, most people are likely to say they would speak up and expect that any/all workers in their organization seeing the same conditions or behaviors would do so as well. The research-based data say otherwise, but most of us still say we would resist the authority. But even when there is no demanding authority figure in the scenario putting pressure on us to obey, either of two invisible forces will likely kick in, actually reducing the likelihood that an individual would in fact speak up to address a problem.
First, in the presence of others, any individual automatically feels less personal responsibility to act, as a function of the number of others present (the so-called “diffusion of responsibility”). Paradoxically, the more of us who are there, the less personal responsibility any of us feels. I pull harder in a rope pull if it’s just me than I do if I am one of a group of 10. Research has shown this again and again.
Obviously, this diffusion of responsibility runs absolutely contrary to the behaviors and attitudes needed to create an organizational culture of excellence.
The other invisible factor is called “pluralistic ignorance.” Especially if there is some ambiguity in the situation, one of the strongest factors on which each individual bases his/her decision whether to take it seriously and act is the behavior of others. We look around. Are others taking it seriously? If no one else is excited, I guess it’s OK? The problem is, everyone is thinking the same thing. And so, no one speaks up or takes action.
While there are some strong-willed individuals who naturally buck these powerful social pressures and are willing to take the risk to be “that guy,” they are a small percentage. Like it or not (and probably not), research clearly shows that the majority of us go along with the group, give in to the social pressure, don’t speak up, and in a work context, make it more likely that mistakes can occur and continue.
I am struck by the number of accidents, quality defects, operational miscues and communications breakdowns that happen in plain view of others, who do not speak up to correct the situation or to stop the wayward conduct. The invisible social-psychological forces that make us fall in line are powerful indeed. But these pressures to conform, to obey when we know it’s not right, to feel less personal responsibility, to judge others’ inaction as evidence that it must be OK, they all can and must be overcome.
The Ways Out
There are many lines of behavioral-science research addressing these very issues. Interestingly, one of the most powerful ways of inoculating people against the inertial effects of social pressure is simply to teach them about such research. Tell a crew or team of frontline workers about the diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance, and then expose them to an ambiguous emergency situation just outside their area (such as someone lying on the ground) and watch them all spring into action!
In the Milgram experiments, the most effective technique for reducing blind obedience to authority was to have members of a group of teachers (all of whom were in cahoots with the experimenter) refuse at some point to go on. Having some social support for disobeying the demands of the experimenter so weakened the invisible but powerful bonds of social pressure (in this case intentional) that the vast majority of true subjects (as many as 90%) also refused to keep administering shocks (so they thought) to the learner.
As the studies show, if one person stands up, speaks up, behaves differently, and breaks the chains of conformity, bad outcomes can be avoided. The lessons for those of us who aim to achieve and sustain organizational excellence are plain to see.
