Personal and situational factors in conformity

Abstract

Viewed in historical perspective, the study of conformity is seen as being the direct descendant of earlier work on suggestion. Suggestion has an important place in the subject matter of social psychology. In fact, as Murphy et al. (1937) note, the "actual beginning of experimental social psychology seems to have been the investigation of suggestion, first put on a scientific basis by Braid between 1841 and 1860" (p.4). Murphy et al. note one of the nineteenth century sources of problems and concepts concerning suggestion - early abnormal psychology. Equally important as a later source, were the sociological writings of such theorists as Le Bon, Sighele and Tarde. The change from the nineteenth to the twentieth century marks a change in the history of suggestion. Prior to 1900, suggestion was viewed as being a bizarre, abnormal event. Methods for its investigation were in the main clinical and demonstrational, rather than experimental. With the work of Binet in 1900, suggestion assumed a legitimate place in psychological enquiry. Suggestion itself became the problems: normal, waking suggestion rather than abnormal manifestations. Techniques of measurement became standardized and capable of quantitative treatment.