Me, us or them: who is more conformist? Perception of conformity and political orientation

Research has shown that people perceive others as more vulnerable thanthemselves to media communication, and their political out-group as more vulnerable thantheir political in-group. In the present study, the authors predicted that the same two biaseswould appear with respect to another kind of influence—conformity—but that participants’judgments would display a different pattern according to their political orientations. Rightwingand left-wing university students were asked to evaluate conformity and to estimatehow conformist they, their political in-group, their political out-group, and other groups are.As hypothesized, right-wingers expressed more ambivalence toward conformity and viewedit less negatively than did left-wingers. Political orientation had no impact on the discrepancybetween self and others, but it did moderate the in-group–out-group discrepancy.