Social Conformity in Networks

Centrality in a social network is found to have a significant effect on Asch-type conformity. Friendship affinity and respect social network data was collected on two different groups of actors. The effects of Asch-type conformity were empirically tested on central actors and peripheral actors in each group using a culturally appropriate version of Asch’s test. Findings show that central actors are less willing to conform and peripheral actors are more willing to conform than expected in Asch-type social conformity experiments. Authors Ian McCulloh, Ph.D. is a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Organisational Analysis in the School of Information Systems at the Curtin University Business School in Perth, Western Australia. Please email all correspondence to Ian McCulloh at [email protected]. Notes Thanks to Dominick Lombardi for his assistance in designing, executing and recording data for the empirical experiments. B R I E F R E P O R T S 331036_B.indd 42 7/26/13 10:27 AM Social Conformity Connections July | Issue 1 | Volume 33 | 36