| Abstract: | An experiment was conducted to test the proposition that a person's level of conformity on a visual task was related to his level of personal novelty on attitudinal dimensions and being reminded that he was an object in the world. Subjects were led to believe that either 95, 50, or 5% of a population of 10,000 held the same position as they did on 10 important attitudinal dimensions. Subjects were then asked to participate in an experiment on visual perception. In this portion of the study, subjects were led to believe that two other subjects consistently disagreed with their estimates and were either shown or not shown their live image on a television monitor. The results of the experiment indicated a positive relationship between novelty on the attitudinal dimensions and both frequency and intensity of conformity on the visual task. As novelty increased, conformity increased. In addition, subjects shown their image on a television monitor during the conformity trials conformed to the bogus others to a greater extent than subjects not shown their image on a television monitor. |
