As an example, we may we engage in unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking or alcohol abuse, simply because our friends are engaging in them. There are many types of conformity, ranging from the simple and unconscious imitation of the other people around us to the obedience created by powerful people who have direct control over us. In this chapter, we will consider both conformity and leadership , which is the ability to direct or inspire others to achieve goals.
And we will also consider which people are most likely to conform. Although conformity sounds like it might be a negative thing and in some cases it is , overall the tendency to be influenced by the actions of others is an important human adaptation.
Conformity is determined by the person-situation interaction, and although the situation is extremely powerful, different people are more or less likely to conform. As you read this chapter, keep in mind that conformity is another example of the ongoing interactive dynamic among people. Just as you are conforming to the influence that others have on you, your behavior is also influencing those others to conform to your beliefs and opinions.
You may be surprised by how often these influences are occurring around you. Coultas, J. When in Rome…An evolutionary perspective on conformity. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 7 , —;. Fincher, C.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, , — Henrich, J. The evolution of conformist transmission and the emergence of between-group differences. The active descriptions of politics before , the year Hitler came to power, undermine notions of seduction or brainwashing in the years after. It is not possible to explain the demise of all sorts of political institutions before Hitler in one way, and to explain the power of the Nazis after that in another way.
Germans constantly deliberated questions of race, authority and loyalty. Only a minority became full-fledged Nazis, but most accepted the basic premises of the regime, including the isolation of German Jews.
While most Germans had at least a vague idea of the Holocaust, they almost certainly did not endorse mass murder, which is not to say they were not complicit in the persecution of their neighbors along the way to the "final solution. You call the collection of letters in the "Homelands" book "an indispensible source for understanding the Nazis. Historians have access to lots of propaganda tracts and to the most extreme statements made by leading Nazis, but we don't have many transcripts of more-ordinary Germans explaining their choices.
In this case, family members lived both in Holland and Germany and were divided politically between enthusiastic pro-Nazism and skeptical anti-Nazism, a situation that forced correspondents to explain themselves, to argue matters out. The letters also reveal the holes or seams in Nazi appeal.
The son, for example, broke with friends over his loyalty to the Nazis, but also fell in love with a woman with a Jewish grandparent, something that complicated his assumptions. What the letters and diaries reveal is the qualified, not always easy, but nonetheless unmistakable desire to be part of the National Socialist movement. What made all those people follow the orders they were given?
Were they afraid, or was there something in their personality that made them like that? In order to obey authority, the obeying person has to accept that it is legitimate i. Adolf Eichmann was executed in for his part in organizing the Holocaust, in which six million Jewish people, as well as gypsies, communists and trade unionists were transported to death camps and murdered in Nazi Germany and surrounding countries under Nazi control.
Eichmann was a logistical genius whose part in the Holocaust was the planning of the efficient collection, transportation and extermination of those to be killed. At his trial in , Eichmann expressed surprise at being hated by Jewish people, saying that he had merely obeyed orders, and surely obeying orders could only be a good thing. In his jail diary Eichmann wrote 'The orders were, for me, the highest thing in my life and I had to obey them without question' extract quoted in The Guardian, 12 August, , p.
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