Popular Delusions: How Social Conformity Molds Society and Polit ...

The conformity effect gets stronger with increasing population size and as the number of traits subject to conformity increases.

This evolutionary model is speculative but is a reasonable explanation of how humans ended up in a myriad of diverse societies, each with a high degree of social conformity but different norms, customs, and cultures. Other theories are possible, however, to explain both human diversity and transmission of conformity with social norms. One theory is that cultures adapt to their environment, generating the optimal behaviors, social structure, and norms for each situation. In this type of theory, no evolutionary or genetic transmission of conformity is assumed. This theory, however, does not explain why different human groups often have different cultures in the same environments; anthropologists can cite many examples of this. Punishment of people who violate norms can also maintain and transmit conformist patterns from one generation to the next without any reference to genetics. For example, if murder is always punished, the norm against it will continue down through generations. But the scope of a punishment theory must be very limited as, clearly, there are many social norms that are not subject to any serious punishment for their violation. Punishment theory might better explain why certain specific norms are transmitted across generations rather than conformity itself.

Aside from the question of how conformity and norms evolved, most researchers in the social sciences fall into one of two camps as they study present-day social behavior: rational choice theory or sociological theory. Although there are a variety of theoretical views subsumed within each type of theory, they have distinct interpretations of human nature and social conformity. Rational choice assumes that people act with purpose; that they have consistent preferences that are ranked, relatively constant, and not changing with social conditions; and that they maximize utility, selecting their behavior from alternatives that give the most expected gains.