Dr. Shannon Lupien recently published a study that suggests that standing up for your beliefs, expressing your opinions, and demonstrating your core values can be a positive psychological experience, report researchers.
The study uses the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat to test conformity behavior, cardiovascular responses and corresponding psychological experience in the face of a unanimously disagreeing group. Results indicated a divergence between conformity behavior and cardiovascular responses such that conformity occurred in the presence of a disagreeing group regardless of goals, but when participants had the goal to express individuality, they experienced a positive psychological state in the face of a disagreeing group. Here is a link to the press release in science daily:
Seery, M. D., Gabriel, S., Lupien, S. P., & Shimizu, M. (2016). Alone against the group: A unanimously disagreeing group leads to conformity, but cardiovascular threat depends on one's goals. Psychophysiology, 53, 1263-1271.