Table of Contents (click to expand)What Is Conformity?Why Do We Follow Social Norms? We give up our personal freedoms to conform to social norms because those norms provide stability within a society. Social psychologists have looked at what following social norms offers individuals and societies. If there is a queue, you will stand at the back of the line. When you step into a restaurant, you know exactly what to expect. You will walk towards an assigned table, peruse the menu, and ord...
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![Several years ago Clifford Nass, a late professor of Human-Computer Interaction at Stanford University, did a study where participants were taught a subject by a male or female voice on a computer. The two subjects taught were “love and relationships” and “physics.” Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four combinations of voice+topic to learn the material. At the end of the session, they completed a computer-based questionnaire where they were asked how effective each voice was at teaching the given topic. Even though the material was identical between the voices, participants rated the male voice better at teaching “physics” and the female voice better at teaching “love and relationships.” When asked if gender played a role in their assessment of their tutor, participants uniformly said that would be ludicrous. This was a voice on a computer, after all. Every participant denied harboring any gender stereotypes, yet the evidence of gendered expectations was undeniable when looking at the data [1]. This article talks about social norms and gender biases, how they manifest in the workplace, and how we can start fixing them.](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/11/cf/32/11cf3214e2b0d7856471d38f826ec695.jpg)
