Obedience, on the other hand, involves following the orders or commands of an authority figure, often without questioning or thinking critically. While conformity and obedience involve social influence, Share: Asch 1951 conducted one of the most famous laboratory experiments examining conformity. He wanted to examine the extent to which social pressure from a majority could influence a person to conform. Asch's sample consisted of male students at Swarthmore College in America, who thought they were participating. There are three types of social influence - conformity - conformity - obedience conformity. Conformity involves the development of attitudes, opinions and behaviors appropriate to the attitudes of a specific group. Most people conform to the standard values, also called norms, of many groups without stress and often without even knowing that they,