Psychology of management

Type II
is
 protective conformity
. In this case, a person by joining a group is looking for 
protection from trouble threatening him/her outside the group, (s)he spontaneously aspires for 
support on the part of majority. 
Type III 
is
conditional, purely outer conformity
which develops in accordance with the 
scheme “The king’s new dress”. In this case, an individual agrees with the group, majority, 
though in fact (s)he thinks otherwise. (S)he can demonstratively submit to the opinion imposed 
by the group to earn their approval or avoid reprimand on the part of group-mates, to make a 
more successful career, and so on. 
Conformity is studied experimentally by “dummy groups method” the idea of which is 
that a specially matched group “presses” on a particular individual urging him/her to change 

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his/her original opinion. By the rate of submission to such influence the level of the individual’s 
conformity is calculated. 
According to scientific data obtained so far, the extent of conformity depends on a 
number of factors which include: age – children and teenagers are more conformed than adults; 
sex – women are more conformed than men; profession – among men army officers are more 
conformed than technical specialists. 
According to the data by American social psychologists, 80% of people in society are 
conformists of various types. 
The quality opposite to conformity is 
negativism
(non-conformism) (from Lat. negato – 
denying), i.e. an individual’s unmotivated behavior opposing demands and expectations of other 
people and social groups. Negativism can manifest as situational reaction (in children and 
teenagers), and as a personality trait. This quality can be the consequence of a person’s need in 
self-establishing, as well as the consequence of egotism and alienation from other people’s needs 
and interests. The psychological basis of negativism is an individual’s attitude at disagreement, 
negating of certain demands, forms of training, at protest against traditions of a certain group, or 
a particular person’s statements. The extreme manifestation of negativism is stubbornness, a 
person’s proneness to conflicts. 
Rigidity
(from Lat. rigidus – hard) is difficulty in, and sometimes impossibility for a 
person of changing the previously set activity programs in conditions that demand some changes. 
There are several kinds of rigidity. 
Cognitive rigidity
is found in difficulties to re-build perceptions, ideas, memory patterns 
in a changed situation. 
Affective rigidity
is displayed in inability to change emotional perception 
of the changing objects of emotions. Motivational rigidity is displayed in non-mobile 
rearrangement of the activity motivation system in new circumstances that demand flexibility 
and changing an individual’s character of behavior. 
A person’s 
rigidity level
is determined by interaction of personality traits and the 
peculiarities of group influences including the grade of complexity of the arising tasks, their 
attractiveness for the person, the presence of danger, monotonous activity, etc. 
Unlike conformity and negativism as unconscious spontaneous manifestations of 
personality in relation to the group, there is a universally accepted in our domestic psychology 
phenomenon of collectivism. 

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Collectivism
is a personality’s conscious solidarity with group’s traditions and demands. 
A person takes a certain position (either positive or negative) in a group not spontaneously, but 
as a result of conscious evaluating of the correspondence of group influences to his/her own 
convictions, displaying in this case 
adherence to principles
as an important moral-and-volitional 
personality trait. 
Frustration
is a state of personality when a person feels the group’s enmity, its real or 
imaginary counteraction against his/her aims, hopelessness of his/her position in the group, etc. 
The state of frustration leads to considerable changes in a person’s behavior: there can be 
displayed rudeness, aggressiveness both in relation to the circumstances that act immediately as 
obstacles, barriers, and in relation to the whole social surrounding, especially in adolescence. 
Sometimes frustration manifests in self-humiliation, and leads to nervous depression. Sometimes 
in passive people this leads to the substitution of the blocked activity with imaginary situations. 
Thus, an employee who couldn’t justify his/her failure to an executive changes this situation for 
the better in his/her imagination. The state of frustration experienced too often may lead to 
formation of personality’s undesirable traits – passiveness, aggressiveness. An ability to create a 
perspective for each employee’s personality is an important skill of an executive. 
The viewed complicated dynamics of interaction between personality and a group, 
as well as observed specific phenomena of group behavior are of considerable practical interest 
for managers of social control systems because an executive should play a certain role in the 
regulation of interpersonal relations, relations between each group-member, and the collective as 
a whole.