PsychologicalReports, 2005,96,591-594. O Psychological Reports 2005 TENDENCY TO CONFORM: A NEW MEASURE AND ITS RELATIONSHIP T O PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTANCE ' RONALD E. GOLDSMITH, RONALD A. CLARK Florida Sate University BARBARA A. LAFFERTY Univevsit~ of South Florida Summary.-This study assessed the relationship between two important con- structs in social psychology, conformity and psychological reactance, which are sug- gested to be negatively related, i.e., a person higher in the tendency to conform will score lower on psychological reactance and vice versa. The two constructs were mea- sured by multi-item self-report scales, the Therapeutic Reactance Scale of Dowd, et al. and a new tendency to conform scale constructed for this study. Data from a survey of 423 undergraduate students were used to test the hypothesis that scores on the scales were negatively correlated. The hypothesized relationship was positively sup- ported by a significant but only moderately sized correIation (r = -32, p< .001). Interest in conformity has led social psychologists to develop a nomo- logical network of relationships surrounding this construct. Conformity is in- fluenced by situation; therefore, a tremendous amount of research has been conducted using experimental designs such as the Milgram experiment (1963) and Asch's line judgment task (Bond & Smith, 1996). However, social psy- chologists have long understood that a predisposition to conform is also manifest as an individual difference (Krech, Crutchfield, & Ballachey, 1962). We refer to this personality trait as tendency to conform. Psychological reac- tance has been alluded to as an important antecedent (Buboltz, Johnson, & Woller, 2003) to conformity. Similar to conformity, psychological reactance has both a situational component and an individual difference component. The purpose of this study was twofold, (1) to examine the relationship be- tween these two constructs and (2) to develop a short self-report measure of tendency to conform. We describe tendency to conform as a global, enduring individual dif- ference manifested by an individual predisposition to acquiesce to social norms prescribed by salient reference groups. Psychological reactance is de- scribed as how much an individual exhibits the psychological motivation to restore personal freedoms subsequent to the perception that the freedoms are 'Address correspondence to Dr. Ronald Goldsmith, Marketing De artment, College of Busi- ness, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1110 or e-maif Irgoldam@garnet.acns.fsu. edu).