Conformists may try to fit in with the crowd, but do not always expect them to cooperate for the greater good of the group.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia, U.K., set up a game to observe the amount of cooperation between pairs of study participants matched for levels of social conformity and found that groups consisting of conformists tended to play uncooperatively.

In the first part of the experiment, participants were scored by how much they wanted to fit in, that is, their “social desirability.” They were then asked about their attitude toward paying taxes.

Those who had higher social desirability were categorized as conformists and, as expected, expressed more willingness to pay taxes to follow social norms.

In the second part of the experiment, participants were paired based on their conformity levels to play a game in which they had to allocate funds for public welfare projects. In essence, the game involved paying taxes. Playing cooperatively would benefit both partners, while playing uncooperatively would better benefit the less-cooperative individual.

Despite having expressed more willingness to pay taxes, participants with higher conformity levels were found to play uncooperatively and not share as much money in the game as nonconformists.

“Contrary to our predictions, conformity does not equal cooperation,” said co-author Dr. Piers Fleming in a press release. “Social desirability has an impact on behavior in that it doesn’t actually lead to people cooperating more.

“The expectation is that people who are high in social desirability will conform to the effort other people are putting into the task, but actually the conforming people may be less helpful because they take their cue from the less helpful members of the team. They are conforming to the person who is not necessarily working that hard.”

The researchers further investigated the effect of positive feedback on cooperation levels. They found that when participants were encouraged to donate more, only those pairs of participants ranking low in conformity began to share more.

“In this study, although people who are highly conformist might state they are more likely to pay tax, conformity may, in fact, have made them unlikely to pay more than their partner paid previously,” said co-author Professor Daniel Zizzo in the release.

“By contrast, the less-conforming individuals were willing to ignore their partner’s investment and to invest more when they were encouraged by the approval score. This led to greater investment for both and to a virtuous circle of mutual benefit.”

The study is published in the August issue of Personality and Individual Differences.

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