Jang, what a great summary of research findings! Very nice presentation. The Milgram study, in particular, makes fascinating reading--I have a book that contains the experimenters' full summary, and I recommend it to everyone who wants to understand the psychology of complying with authority.
Of course, compliance or conformity might be bad or might be good--it all depends on the situation, don't you think? The example of traffic regulations comes to mind, or waiting one's turn at the cafeteria line.
Being raised with a fine Texas sense of independence and thinking-for-yourself, I nevertheless agree with those old Greek boys who said that virtue is the mean between two extremes--the Golden Mean. Excessive kowtowing and excessive idiosyncracy are both bad. In fact the latter often turns into just another form of submission to the group--beatniks, hippies, punk rockers, and whatever-they-call-it-now all start out by glorifying "individuality" and end up all being depressingly alike, no?
Seems to me the simple point of all those studies you quoted is that most folks just cannot resist social pressure. Driving to work the other day, I heard a tongue-in-cheek radio ad hawking some product, and the tag line was "people who are different get ridiculed." How true! And most folks just do not have the courage to face ridicule, real or imagined, or the courage to risk being unloved, unliked.
One benefit of having been a JW, for me, was learning to have the courage to be different from the crowd--though I'm long since over the WTBTS, I still don't feel I HAVE to be just like everybody else when the issue is important to me. And that's a good feeling.
Peace :-)
Bill
"If we all loved one another as much as we say we love God, I reckon there wouldn't be as much meanness in the world as there is."--from the movie Resurrection (1979)