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Conformity Bias: A Fact or an Experimental Artifact?

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Abstract

Upon exploring social psychology’s treatment of the term social influence, a skew towards conformity is noted. This skew points to the tendency of amplifying the effect of conformity and minimizing any other form of social influence and has been termed ‘conformity bias’. This review explores the concept of conformity and tries to examine what conformity entails and how it has been understood (and often misunderstood). It is observed that conformity is not a unitary concept and has various facets to it. Besides identifying key disciplinary features such as methodology and ideology that may be possible causes of this skew, implications of this bias are discussed. Failure to identify and move beyond conformity bias may lead to failure in recognizing real social issues. Therefore, it becomes imperative that researchers be wary of this bias and take steps to consciously overcome it.

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Dr. Arvind K. Mishra, ZHCES, JNU for his suggestions and guidance in preparing this manuscript.

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  1. Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

    Divya Padalia

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  1. Divya Padalia
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Correspondence to Divya Padalia.

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Padalia, D. Conformity Bias: A Fact or an Experimental Artifact?. Psychol Stud 59, 223–230 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-014-0272-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-014-0272-8

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