Anticipatory Compliance
Anticipatory Compliance is a proposed composite bias in which a person pre-conforms because they expect others to conform, thereby helping create the conformity they predicted.
| Anticipatory Compliance | |
|---|---|
| Field | Cognitive psychology; social conformity; group behavior |
| Author | Andrew Lehti |
| Status | Proposed composite bias |
| Former name | Projected Conformity |
| Related framework | Cognitive Impasse |
| Related concepts | Pluralistic Ignorance, Enforced Sameness, Normative Reflex, Social Proof |
Anticipatory Compliance describes conformity performed in advance. The person expects others to follow a norm, so they conform first to avoid standing out. This removes the visible dissent that might have shown others they were not alone.
Within Cognitive Impasse, Anticipatory Compliance protects systems by turning prediction into obedience. Fear of isolation manufactures the very social pattern the person expected.
The bias is adjacent to pluralistic ignorance, where people misread the private beliefs of others and conform to a norm that may have weaker support than it appears.
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