Personality and Conformity: The Learning of Political Attitudes

Why do some men embrace society's values while others reject them? Is conformity a general trait, more uniformly manifested by some people than by others? What social or psychological forces lie behind the tendency to conform or deviate? Although these questions obviously have significance for the conduct of political life, they have received far less attention from political scientists than from scholars in other disciplines such as psychology and sociology. In view of current challenges to the legitimacy of existing political institutions, the mounting debate over the acceptable limits of protest, and the growing disdain for democratic decision-processes shown by some segments of the population, the need for political scientists to understand the nature and sources of conformity and deviation has become, if anything, more urgent. We hope, in the present paper, to explore the psychological—and to some extent the social and political—meaning of conformity and deviation as reflected in citizen responses to political beliefs. To that end we shall review briefly the present state of psychological theory and research on conformity behavior; suggest, in light of our own research findings, some ways in which current psychological explanations might be modified and extended to account for conformity and deviation within the mass public; and furnish data that might help to explain why individuals who have different personality characteristics and who occupy different roles in the society are likely to accept or reject political norms.