Page 40 - The Social Animal

22 The Social Animal

conform, there were no explicit constraints against individuality. In
many situations, the sanctions against nonconformity are clear and
unequivocal. For example, I hate to wear a tie, and under most cir-
cumstances I can get away with this minor idiosyncrasy. On occa-
sion, however, I can’t. I often find myself stopped at the entrance
to a restaurant and politely (but firmly) informed that if I refuse to
don the tie offered me by the maitre d’, I cannot dine in the restau-
rant. I can either put on the tie and eat in the restaurant or leave,
open-necked and comfortable but hungry. The negative conse-
quences of nonconformity are made very explicit.
But in Asch’s experiment (and in the hypothetical example of
Sam watching the candidate on television), the situations were much
more subtle. In these situations, there were no explicit rewards for
conformity and no explicit punishments for deviance. Why, then, did
Asch’s participants and Sam conform? There are two major possibil-
ities; either they became convinced, in the face of the judgment of
the unanimous majority, that their own opinions were wrong, or they
“went along with the crowd” (while inwardly believing their initial
judgments were correct) in order to be accepted by the majority or to
avoid being disliked by them for disagreeing.
In short, what I am suggesting is that these individuals had two
important goals: the goal of being correct and the goal of staying in the
good graces of other people by living up to their expectations. In many
circumstances, both of these goals can be satisfied by a simple action.
Driving on the right-hand side of the road is the correct thing to do,
and it satisfies other people’s expectations. So, too, are telephoning
your mother on Mother’s Day, giving proper directions to a visitor in
town, and studying hard to perform well on an exam. Similarly, if oth-
ers agreed with your judgment of the lengths of the lines, you could
satisfy both goals by being true to your own estimate. But, in Asch’s
experiment, these two goals were placed in conflict. If you were a par-
ticipant in that experiment and you initially believed that the correct
answer was line B, then saying so might satisfy your desire to be cor-
rect—but it might also violate the expectations of your peers, and they
might think you a bit odd. On the other hand, choosing line A might
win you the acceptance of the others, but unless you became convinced
that they were correct, it would violate your desire to be right.
Most people believe that they are motivated primarily by a de-
sire to be correct but that others are motivated primarily by a desire