conformity
Conformity is the habit of bringing your opinions and behaviour into line with what a group, a majority or an authority expects; its opposite is nonconformity.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Definitions
- Behaviour that follows the rules, customs or opinions of the people around you, especially when you go along with them in order to fit in or avoid trouble.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - In social psychology: a change in a person's actions or stated beliefs caused by real or imagined pressure from a group.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - Agreement or correspondence between one thing and another, as when a product is in conformity with a standard or a decision is in conformity with the law.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - Historically, in England: acceptance of the doctrines and practices of the established Church, as opposed to the dissent of nonconformists.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Examples
- In the meeting everyone nodded along with the manager, a quiet display of conformity that nobody admitted to afterwards.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - Teenagers often combine rebellion against their parents with striking conformity to their friends.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - All electrical equipment sold in the shop must be in conformity with current safety regulations.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Usage
In everyday speech conformity usually carries a slightly negative tone. To accuse a person or an institution of conformity suggests that they have given up independent thought for comfort, safety or approval. The same word is perfectly neutral in technical and legal writing, where in conformity with simply means in agreement with: a building in conformity with the planning rules, a report in conformity with the guidelines. Context decides which sense is meant, so the phrase conformity with the law is praise while a culture of conformity is criticism.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Conformity is not the same as obeying rules in general. Someone who stops at a red light is following shared norms, but we rarely call that conformity. The word fits better when a person changes an opinion only because others hold it, even while privately disagreeing. Social psychologists have studied this since the middle of the twentieth century, most famously in the experiments of Solomon Asch, where participants sometimes gave obviously wrong answers about the length of lines after hearing a group answer first.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)The plural conformities appears in Webster's 1913 dictionary for separate points of likeness, but today the noun is uncountable. A person who conforms is a conformist, the verb is conform and the related adjective is conformable. Conformism is a rarer synonym that stresses conformity as an attitude or a way of life. Frequent phrases include social conformity, pressure towards conformity, blind conformity, in conformity with and a certificate of conformity.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Word forms
Regular forms according to English morphology (editorial description); plural recorded in Webster's 1913 dictionary.
word forms
| przypadek | forma |
|---|---|
| singular | conformity |
| plural | conformities |
Word forms: Editorial team
Collocations
- social conformity
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - blind conformity
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - pressure to conform
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - in conformity with
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - certificate of conformity
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Synonyms · Antonyms
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Etymology
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W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., Oxford 1910, open sourcealso
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913, open sourceRelated words
- conform , verb
- conformist , noun
- conformable , adjective
- nonconformity , antonym
Related entries
Questions and answers
What does conformity mean?
Conformity means behaving or thinking in the way a group or society expects. Wearing what everyone else wears so as not to stand out, or agreeing with the majority to avoid an argument, are everyday examples.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Is conformity good or bad?
Neither by itself. Some conformity makes shared life possible, such as following traffic rules. It becomes a problem when people suppress their own honest judgement, or stay silent about something wrong, only because others go along with it.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)How does conformity differ from conformism?
Conformity is the general word for going along with a group or matching a standard. Conformism is less common and names an attitude: a settled tendency to conform, usually meant as criticism.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)What does in conformity with mean?
It means in agreement with or according to something, usually a rule, law or standard. A contract drawn up in conformity with the law is one that meets its requirements.