Conformity among University Professors and Business Executives.

Four measures have been developed from the Tomkins-Horn Picture Arrangement Test which can provide reliable information regarding the level of conformity in various groups. The present paper deals with the upper strata of the business and academic worlds. Evidence is presented which bears directly on assertions that top executives have remained relatively uninfluenced by pressures to conformity, while university professors have succumbed to these pressures. The author finds that conformity and deviance occur in both occupational groups, and that both are on the average less conforming than the typical college graduate. This relative nonconformity appears, however, to be an artifact associated with age differences. Professors and executives are, in general, no less conforming than others when age is held constant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]