Compliance & Conformity
What the science and history say about this all-too-common human weakness
During the COVID lockdowns and BLM riots in 2020, I was stuck in Rhode Island without much to do except fantasize about my escape to Florida. That and to ask lots of questions.
I recently discovered a treasure trove of notecards, sticky notes, and notebook pages filled with random thoughts, concerns, and questions that sprang up around that time. One of the most common themes was this idea of compliance and conformity.
Why did so many people give in?
There are plenty of scientific experiments that told us what would happen — that the majority of people would listen to authorities without question, dutifully take their jabs, and turn on their neighbors who dared not comply.
Asch Conformity Experiment
The Asch Conformity Experiment showed us how little societal pressure is needed in order for someone to ignore their own eyes and instincts.
In this “vision” study, every participate except for one was in on it. Numerous tests were given. In the earlier ones, everyone provided the same (and correct) response to which was the identical line.
However, as the test went on, the participants that were in on the deception began to give the same but erroneous answer.
This left the true participant in a sticky situation. Does he respond with what he believes is the correct line and go against everyone else in the majority? Or follow along?
Throughout the course of the Asch trials, only 25% of the real participants never conformed to the group’s responses. The rest eventually chose to ignore their instincts as well as reality in order to fall in line with what everyone else was saying.
I’m not going to lie, there were numerous times in 2020 where I thought to myself, “Am I going crazy?”. It really wasn’t until I started spending more time on Substack and Twitter that I realized I wasn’t the only one asking these questions or thinking these things. But if you don’t find that validation, I wonder if it’s only a matter of time before everyone caves.
The Stanford Prison Experiment
There have been numerous books written and movies and documentaries filmed that try to unpack what happened over this failed social experiment.
The Stanford Prison Experiment took a group of young men and divided them into the role of prison guard or prisoner. The goal of the study was to observe the men in a mock prison setting over the course of two weeks and to see how the power dynamics fleshed out.
The guards were given a set of rules they had to follow. Outside of that, they were left to their own devices to manage the prisoner population. It didn’t take long before many of the guards began to manifest authoritarian behavior.
In response, the prisoners began to respond as real prisoners would. Many of them were obedient, accepting and following the guards’ orders. Some of them started to rebel by the second day though.
The rebellion was taken down. From that day forward, the prisoners fell into one of two camps.
The ones that fully complied received special privileges as a result. The ones who rebelled were stripped of their rights and placed in confinement. One of the prisoners was even labeled a “bad prisoner” by his fellow inmates because he was being difficult and crying.
The experiment was terminated after only six days because of how quickly the situation devolved. That was all it took. Just mere days for people to internalize the roles they were given.
This study, again, confirms the idea that the majority of people will cave to authority and do what they’re told without question or issue. This one, however, revealed a bit more about the darker side of humanity and how so many will become violent and controlling the second they’re given any sort of authority — even in a simulated prison situation.
The Milgram Experiments
Stanley Milgram was a researcher who wanted to learn more about why people did what they did during World War II. With so many Nazi guards and partners claiming after the fact that they were simply obeying, he wondered how far most people would go if given orders to do something that went against their morals or conscience.
Milgram carried out tons of experiments over the years in an attempt to see how people conform and under what types of conditions. The experiment he’s most famous for, though, involved shock treatments.
In this study, there were three players. The experimenter was the one providing orders. He was in on it.
The teacher was the one calling out words and then administering shocks if the word pair was incorrectly identified. This was the true participant.
The student was the one in the other room listening to the word pairs and then providing a response to the teacher’s questions. If they guessed the matching word pair incorrectly, a shock was administered. The student was in on it.
There were no shocks administered during the test. The teacher didn’t know this. In part, because they couldn’t see the student. Also, because the student was screaming from the other side of the wall with grunts and demands to “get me out of here” before falling completely silent.
The test results shocked Milgram. He hadn’t expected so much compliance. Granted, many of the teachers exhibited signs of reluctance and stress. However, in the original study, 100% of the teachers administered shocks up to 300 volts while 65% continued on to the highest level at 450 volts.
If you haven’t seen the movie Experimenter, I’d suggest checking it out. It does a great job of showcasing how easily many of the teachers gave in simply because someone else was giving them orders.
The Fast Food Prank Calls
Unlike the examples above, the fast food prank calls of the 1990s/2000s weren’t part of any scientific study. If you haven’t heard of this story or seen the movie Compliance, then buckle up, buckaroo.
At a McDonald’s in Mt. Washington, KY, assistant manager Donna Summers received a phone call from an Officer Scott. He told her that one of her employees had stolen money from a customer.
Summers identified Louise Ogborn as the employee that the officer had described and pulled her into the back office for questioning. Over the course of that evening, Ogborn was forced to strip naked in order for Summers to inspect her clothes and person. She then brought in her fiance Walter Nix to keep an eye on her while Ogborn continued on with her management duties.
During that time, Officer Scott instructed Nix to make her do jumping jacks (to shake the money loose), to be spanked (because she was making things difficult for all of them), and to sit on him and eventually give him oral sex (because… ummm… I don’t know).
Other employees in the restaurant were aware that Ogborn had been pulled into the back for questioning. They might not have realized the extent of what was happening to her, but that didn’t matter. Because there was a police officer on the phone and he told them all that she was guilty.
It wasn’t until a maintenance worker at the restaurant was pulled into the office and refused to follow the policeman’s instructions that the whole thing came to an end.
It turns out, this wasn’t the first prank call made by David Stewart. There had been over 70 calls made to fast food restaurants over the years. This just happened to be the one they were able to take to court because of the severity of the outcome.
There are so many horrifying things we’ve learned about compliance from this story.
First is that no one thought at any given time to ask for proof that the police officer was who he said he was, to ask why it had taken hours for him or his colleagues to show up at the restaurant, or how sexually abusing an 18-year-old girl was standard procedure for a possible theft.
Second is Donna Summers obeyed without question, no matter how ridiculous or obscene the requests were. Louise Ogborn complied with the demands to strip, jump, and give Nix head because, in her own words, she was taught to do what adults told her to do. Nix complied with the officer’s requests because… Well, there’s no justifying that.
And then there’s the fact that it took one maintenance worker to question things to wake everyone up. Even then, the perpetrators (i.e. Summers and Nix) never really owned up to what they did. As Summers explains in the interview above, she was just doing what she was told. She even lies at one point despite the video evidence.
Final Thoughts
What do these studies and real world scenarios tell us about compliance and conformity? Ugh.
The pessimist in me says that we’re all fucked. I mean, we’ve all lived through the same last few years and have seen how quickly and comfortably people have fallen into line. Stay home. Wear your mask. Don’t question what your leaders are doing. Jab up. Shun your unvaxxed friends and family. Buy electric. Get your blue checkmark. On and on and on it goes.
But the reluctant optimist in me wants to focus on the minority of people in these scenarios who stood up and said “No.” or “Why?”.
Is there a way to get that minority to grow in size or to amplify their voices? I don’t know. Like I said earlier, studies told us what people would do when given orders to do something that went against their instincts or personal ethics. As for why they do it, that’s trickier. It could be a nature vs. nurture thing. For some people, simply being raised to always obey authority could be all that’s needed to comply. For others, it could be growing up in a time like now where fitting in and feeding one’s ego matters more than personal integrity.
I guess the fact that there are people out there who won’t blindly submit to authority or to the crowd’s consensus gives me some hope. I just wish we could bottle up whatever it is that makes nonconformists immune to all this shit and give it to anyone who wants to grow a backbone and stand upright for the first time in their lives.