Konformizm w środowisku wiejskim

The paper analyses the phenomenon of conformity in the peasant society: its social range in the 1970's, its diversification with regard to some basic demographic and social features, and its main environmental correlates (participation in primary groups and informal relations as well as in organizational and institutional structures or in secondary relations ). We define conformity, after E.Aronson, as an adjustment of the behavior and the mode of thinking of an individual to the mode of thinking of a group, regardless of its negative or positive character. On the basis of a questionnaire research an empirical analysis was undertaken of the so-called normative conformity (the declared acceptance of a norm subjecting the individual's behavior to the judgement of all villagers), and of the so-called situational conformity (consisting in the coincident expression by the husbad and the wife of similar opinions on various matters significant for their life-situation during one interview). The following empirical theses have been put forward in accordance to the formulated problems: 1. From 2/3 to 3/4 conformists, and ca. 1/4 nonconformists have been observed in the studied population of Polish peasants at the end of 1970. A polarization of the phenomenon needs special stress, since for both empirical indexes applied in the study the types of extreme conformists and extreme nonconformists were far more numerous than the moderate types. 2. For both indexes used the diversification of conformity is realized not along the three-element structure of stratification (workers, peasants, white collars) but inside these groups.Greater conformity is characteristic of lower fractions of the white collars', workers', and peasants' groups while greater nonconformity is a feature of the respective higher fractions. 3. It is not the participation in primary and informal groups but, above all, the diverse indexes of organizational and institutional participation which are the statistically significant correlates of both types of conformity.