PSYCH 614 Week 4 Conformity, Compliance and Obedience Example

"Everyone Does It Here": Conformity and Obedience Behind a New Forklift Operator's Near Miss

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSYCH/614: Social Psychology

Week 4 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The operator, warehouse, supervisor and incident are composites written for a model paper; research findings come from the sources listed.

Social psychology has shown that ordinary people often go along with groups and authorities even when they privately know better. These findings are not just laboratory curiosities. This paper applies research on conformity, compliance and obedience to a near miss involving a graduate of my workforce center's forklift certification.

The Incident

Marco Reyes, twenty-three, earned his forklift certification through our center in the spring and was hired by a regional distribution center outside Las Cruces. Two months later, he called me after an incident at work. Operators are required to complete a pre-shift equipment check, including brakes, horn and forks, and to travel with loads lowered. Marco said that on his shift almost no one did the check, and operators routinely drove with loads raised to save time at the racks. His lead told new operators, "Keep up with the crew; we don't have time for the checklist." One evening, driving with a raised load around a corner, Marco braked hard, and a pallet of bottled water slid and fell, missing a coworker by a few feet. No one was hurt. Marco felt ashamed, because he had learned in our course exactly why loads should be lowered.

Conformity: Going Along With the Crew

Conformity is changing one's behavior to match a group. It can be informational, when people follow others because they believe others know better, or normative, when people follow others to be accepted. Asch's line judgment studies showed that many participants gave an obviously wrong answer when a unanimous group did, mainly for normative reasons.

Bond and Smith (1996) meta-analyzed 133 studies using Asch's task from seventeen countries. Conformity increased with group size and was higher when the majority was unanimous, when participants were women and in collectivist cultures that emphasize group harmony. Conformity in the United States had declined since the 1950s. The meta-analysis shows that conformity is robust but varies with culture, era and the structure of the group.

Marco's choice fits normative conformity. He knew the correct procedure, so he was not uncertain about the facts. But every operator on his shift skipped the check, the group was unanimous and Marco was the newest member, eager to be accepted.

Obedience: Following the Lead

Obedience is following a direct instruction from an authority. Milgram's experiments in the 1960s found that most participants followed an experimenter's instructions to deliver what they believed were increasingly strong electric shocks to another person. Burger (2009) rebuilt the procedure but halted it at the first loud protest from the learner, the 150-volt step, because in the 1960s data nearly everyone who pressed past that step kept going to the top of the board. Burger screened participants carefully for vulnerability and reminded them they could withdraw. Roughly seven in ten of Burger's participants were ready to go on, close to the 1960s figure, and watching a planted peer refuse first did not reliably lower that share.

Marco's lead was not ordering anything as dramatic, but the structure was similar: an authority instructed him to act against his training, and the steps were gradual, beginning with skipping the check once on a busy night. Marco said, "He's the lead. If something went wrong, I figured it was on him." This shift of responsibility to the authority is a central feature of obedience.

He had learned the rule in class; the shift taught him a different one.

Compliance and the Desire to Belong

Cialdini and Goldstein (2004) reviewed research on compliance and conformity and organized it around three goals that motivate people to yield to influence: accuracy, wanting to respond correctly to reality; affiliation, wanting to build and keep relationships; and maintaining a positive self-concept. They described how social norms, both descriptive norms about what others do and injunctive norms about what others approve, shape behavior, and how people comply with requests through principles such as reciprocity, commitment and liking.

On Marco's shift, the descriptive norm was clear: no one did the check. The injunctive norm, conveyed by the lead's comment and the crew's teasing of a new hire who once did the check, signaled disapproval of following procedure. Marco's desire for affiliation made compliance attractive. The foot-in-the-door pattern also appears: once he skipped the check one night, raising loads for speed was a smaller next step.

Why No One Spoke Up

A further puzzle is why no operator on the shift objected, since several later told Marco they disliked driving with raised loads. This pattern resembles pluralistic ignorance: each person privately doubts a practice but assumes, from everyone else's silence, that the others accept it. The silence then sustains the practice, because no one sees evidence of the private doubts. New employees are especially unlikely to break such a silence, since they have the least standing and the most to lose. When Marco finally mentioned the near miss to two coworkers, both admitted they had nearly had similar accidents. Making those private doubts visible, for example through anonymous safety surveys reported back to the whole crew, can collapse a norm that few people actually support.

Limits of the Laboratory Studies

Laboratory studies isolate influence in short, artificial tasks with strangers, while workplaces involve long-term relationships, job security and real consequences. These differences probably make workplace conformity stronger, not weaker, because the costs of rejection are higher. On the other hand, workers can find allies and have formal channels, such as safety committees, that laboratory participants lack.

Conformity Is Not Only a Problem

Conformity also helps groups function: following a crew's habits makes coordination possible, and new workers learn much by imitation. The goal is not to eliminate conformity but to make safe behavior the norm that newcomers conform to.

Recommendations

Research suggests changing the situation rather than relying on individual resistance. With Marco's permission, I contacted the employer's safety manager through our employer partnership, without identifying Marco, and shared research-based suggestions. First, make checking visible and expected: a pre-shift huddle where operators complete the check together, with a brief sign-off, turns the descriptive norm toward safety. Second, hold leads accountable for safety metrics, not only speed, so the authority's instructions support procedures. Third, create an explicit "stop the job" policy and model it: when a supervisor praises someone for stopping, it creates an injunctive norm supporting dissent. Fourth, pair new operators with a designated mentor who follows procedures, giving newcomers an ally, since even one dissenter in Asch's studies reduced conformity sharply.

I also worked with Marco to practice a short script for declining unsafe instructions and to report the incident through the employer's anonymous safety line.

For Our Certification Course

The incident also changed our course. We added a session on what new operators may encounter on the job, including pressure to cut corners, and practice in responding. Knowing that social pressure is normal and predictable may help graduates recognize it.

Conclusion

Marco's near miss reflected normative conformity to a unanimous crew, obedience to a lead who placed speed over safety and compliance shaped by the wish to belong. Research on social influence explains these choices without excusing the danger, and it points to changes in norms, authority and support that make safe behavior the easier path.

References

Bond, R., & Smith, P. B. (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch's (1952b, 1956) line judgment task. Psychological Bulletin, 119(1), 111-137. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.119.1.111

Burger, J. M. (2009). Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today? American Psychologist, 64(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0010932

Cialdini, R. B., & Goldstein, N. J. (2004). Social influence: Compliance and conformity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 591-621. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.142015