Levels of Conformity to Leader in Normal and Critical Situations

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine primary school, middle school, high school and university students' levels of conformity to leader in normal and critical situations. Experimental model was used in the research. Study group is comprised of 80 students chosen randomly from Karadeniz Bakır Primary School, Gazi Middle School, Kazım Karabekir Anatolian High School and the department of Primary Education, Faculty of Education, Artvin Çoruh University, Turkey in 2015-2016 academic year. Participants' levels of conformity to leader in normal and critical situations were determined by first calculating group averages in normal and critical conditions to see its proximity from leader's estimate, then differences between leaders' estimates and participants' estimates were calculated to determine participants' levels of conformity to leader in each group, and finally averages of the differences in four separate conditions (NC-w/o leader, NC-w/leader, CC-w/o leader, CC-w/leader) were calculated. Results gained in this study reveal that middle school, high school and university students didn't display much conformity behaviour to leader in normal situations, but primary school students displayed higher conformity behaviour to leader. However, primary school, middle school, high school and university students displayed conformity behaviour to leader in high levels in critical situation. While students generally didn't display conformity behaviour to leader whom they chose for both situations in normal situation, they highly displayed conformity in critical situation.