Is Conformity Good or Bad? Here’s How You Can Think About It
Hint: it depends.
Conformity can be viewed from two angles. From one perspective, conformity is like a lube that makes it easier to get ahead in life. If you conform to the unspoken rules, others will reward you. As a child, you know what makes your parents and teachers (un)happy; you try to steer clear of the cookie jar when you’re not supposed to, hoping that your (proper) behavior will grant you an audience with the jar later on. You know, after you do the dishes or take out the trash.
For most of us, the gravitational pull of the cookie jar sticks throughout our lives. So, we do what’s required. At our workplace or at home, we dutifully fulfill the expectations of people around us. And since we’re being rewarded for conformity — money, respect or love are some common currencies — we grow to like it. And who wouldn’t? We all want to have money, respect, and love.
If we look at it this way, conformity is something we can aspire to (and many people do).
The other perspective tells a bit darker story of conformity. In it, conformity is a malignant force that dispenses with variation and originality through subtle (sometimes not so subtle) manipulation of rewards and punishments.
Those are the moments where we realize what we’ve been chasing isn’t what we truly wanted. Society, our parents, or somebody else impregnated our malleable minds with a seed of an idea. The idea took root and sprouted alien beliefs, values, and behaviors. The realization hits when a thought that goes along the lines of “shit, this isn’t even me…why am I doing this?” springs from the recesses of our minds.
Seen from this perspective, conformity can lead to many regrets, and to a life that isn’t in our control.
So, we’ve arrived at our predicament: conformity can be both good and bad. It can be good if you align your goals with people around you. But it can also be bad, paradoxically, for the very same reason. Thus, a question emerges: how can you get benefits of the good conformity while avoiding the perils of a bad one? For that, let’s look at what makes up good or bad conformity.
If you think about it, the key distinctions between good and bad conformity are:
- Consent — are you conforming by your own volition, or are you conforming because that seems to be the only viable action? and;
- the goodness of the Context — is the reward/punishment structure morally just and good? Are you conforming to a system that provides benefits for as many people as possible, or is aligned with your own moral code?
You can create a 2 x 2 table pitting the two factors against each other. It would look like this.
I will leave out the obviously good (+consent & +context) and obviously bad (-consent & — context) options for clarity (and because it’d be boring).
So, let’s look at the two resulting options, + consent & — context, and -consent & + context, on the examples of: a) a nameless Second World War bureaucrat in Germany, and b) Joe, a sustainability engineer.
You consent in a bad context
In this scenario, you agree to conform, but the context isn’t any good. What do I mean?
In the second world war, Hitler’s idea of making it big included a bunch of genocidal policies that were all referenced as the “final solution”. The phrase in quotation marks was, of course, an euphemism for Holocaust. The issue is, Hitler was just a single person, how could he — a guy with a questionable taste in moustaches — make it happen? Sure, he had very ambitious and vocal aficionados that shared his philosophy, but an action that big couldn’t happen only because authorities demanded it. There must have been an organizational machinery behind all this — a bunch of bureaucrats doing their jobs.
As Christopher Browning writes in Ordinary Men:
“Participation in the Final Solution did not result so much from explicit orders systematically disseminated, as through self-recruitment by the zealous and ambitious servants of the Third Reich in response to the impulses and hints they perceived emanating from the center of power ” (Browning, 1989, pp. 98–99).
Apparently, there was a bunch of people who ambitiously followed the final solution of their own will. They aligned their goals to a bad context. In this instance, conformity was fueled by ambition only to create monsters out of (arguably, supposedly) ordinary people.
The mid-lesson here is this: if you conform to the rules of the society — you consent to the conformity willingly — make sure the context is, well, the opposite of the example above.
Let’s move to the other option.
You don’t consent in a good context.
This one is a toughie and requires a digging into your values. Assuming you tilt towards utilitarianism — you want as much good for the majority of people — you might be okay with being the sacrificial lamb. However, if you have libertarian leanings — your free will being the supreme good — this arrangement might ruffle your feathers.
Consider Joe, a sustainability engineer who works on off-shore wind turbines. Joe never knew what he wanted in life. In fifth grade, he couldn’t decide between Ashley, a lively blonde with a penchant for teasing him; and Leah who couldn’t care less about him (an astute reader notices the both were in love with Joe in their own way!) Joe, always fluttering between them based on the days’ mood, ended up with neither; both got tired of waiting.
Choosing his career was a similarly perilous task, one that, luckily, he got help from his nagging, ehm, loving mom. “You need to choose something with perspective, Joey!” she would say, “something like… engineering (she always loved the sound of that word) you know, something that pays well!”
And so, not knowing any better, Joe embarked on the path of a sustainability engineer. Although he never liked math, the words rung true in his head: “perspective, Joey, perspective pays well!”
Fast forward 10 years and Joe is bored out of his wits. Sure, he builds stuff that helps fight climate change, but his heart’s not in it. He’s also afraid of heights, a fact that became clear on the very first day of his job. A job that he’d probably end up doing for quite a while to pay off his student debt.
The reason why I chose to put Joe in this part of the quadrant is simple — I see sustainability engineering as good. It’s an arbitrary value judgment. But I’m the writer here so you have to deal with it. However, Joe doesn’t think so. Thus, the consent is missing. The result? Unclear.
So, now that we’ve had fun disentangling conformity, how is all this babble relevant to you, my dear reader? Let’s answer that next.
The way I see it, there are two ways of getting the “good kind” of conformity. Either you change the context from bad to good. Or you re-define what is worth conforming to.
Changing context from bad to good
If you enter the perilous journey of changing your context, here’s what you need to know: the biggest problem isn’t the change itself; it’s recognizing that your context is bad in the first place. Why is that a problem? Because you’ll be going against the grain. Remember, most of the people around you think that the context is good (they are good people themselves, of course). In some cases, it might mean they’ll nudge you on a good path, such as that of sustainability engineer.
But in others, well, you might end up perpetrating the war machine, as the nameless bureaucrat in the first example. To come back to the example, I don’t think many people who acted on the behalf of the system believed they did something wrong. They did what majority was doing.
So, to change your context, you must first recognize it needs changing.
Re-define your goals
But what if you can’t or don’t want to change your context? It’s a difficult thing to do, after all. Well, in that case, you can re-align your goals with those around you. You see, people underestimate the negative impact their decisions will have, a phenomenon called affective forecasting. If you ask people how they’ll feel followed by doing something they don’t want, most will answer — well, like shit, duh.
But asking those people again once the change has occurred, most will report the same happiness values. Why? Because they find peace with their predicament, their happiness regresses to the baseline again. And this even applies to people who have lost the ability to walk, for example (you can read more about the phenomenon in Stumbling on Happiness from Dan Gilbert).
So, pick something that others picked before you. Even if it doesn’t feel like it’s 100 % you, chances are it will be, over time. Conformity, in this case, isn’t an enemy you should fight, but a guide that can help you.
Social reality is a powerful thing. Like gravity, it pulls you in one direction — towards conformity. Conformity isn’t good or bad, it all depends on your willingness to re-define your goals, and your determination to change the context from bad to good.
You can apply the above framework to your own situation:
- What are you conforming to?
- Are you doing so willingly or not?
- What about the context — is it good or is it bad?
The answers to these questions will inform your next actions.
