Conformity refers to an individual’s tendency to follow the unspoken rules or behaviours of the social group. Conformity bias is one of the challenges facilitators face in team decision making.
In teams when the estimations are performed, or any decisions are made ,people tend to follow the most experienced/senior person in the group even though they have different answers.
Solomon Asch’s Conformity Experiments
Each person in the room had to answer which line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was always obvious.
Asch put real participants in a room with seven confederates. The confederates already agreed in advance what their responses would be when Asch presented with the line task.
The real participant sat at the end of the row and answered last.
Asch conducted 18 trials in total, and the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 trials (called the critical trials). Asch found that the real participant agreed with the majority view.
Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about one-third of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the incorrect majority on the critical trials. However, when there was no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer.
What facilitator tools do you have in your toolbox to manage conformity bias?