The purpose of this research is to examine the phenomenon of conformity as a consequence of social perceptions that influence behavior. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which this issue achieves significance in social psychology and then to assess when people are most likely to conform to normative social influences. To that end, the research will discuss the need for acceptance; when and why conformity occurs; the importance of accountability in a social context; the power of propaganda to effect conformity; the role of authority in motivating social obedience; and minority influence, or the ability of the few to influence the many.
Freud's monograph on the tension between individual psychology and social experience is described in terms of the structural hypothesis. Freud articulates a structure of personality that comprises one ancillary and three principal components: the ego, superego, and id, plus the libido. Freud defines each component operationally, explaining how each component contributes to the shaping of individual personality and of human interaction. Whatever is external to the individual personality may be configured as society, family, or culture. The idea of more or less permanent tension between the individuals and what is external to them appears to have evolved over time with Freud, such that the context for individual psychological processes to unfold achieved increasing importance. Thus for example in an essay on psychoanalysis originally written in 1926 for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Freud explains that the "most recent" view of the "mental apparatus":
[It] is composed of an "id," which is the reservoir of the instinctive impulses, of an "ego," which is the most superficial portion of the id and one which is modified by the influence of the external world, and of a "super-ego," which develops out of the id, dominates the ego and represents the inhibitions of instinct characte...