This is a very interesting observation, while I don't doubt the observation about typical elite university students is true, I wonder if the inverse observation about the "general population" is enormously less true. This would be necessary in order to expect a different result from said experiment.
In my experience, the person who feels no desire to conform whatsoever is an extreme aberration. Far more frequent are people that pretend to be such and actually simply flip the expected behaviour from a conformist norm and behave in a different way but still conforming to some social group.
Sure, they're individuals, just like the other members of their subculture / social clique, etc.
Eliezer Yudkowsky, in his excellent essay "Lonely Dissent" (http://lesswrong.com/lw/mb/lonely_dissent/): Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit.
In my experience, the person who feels no desire to conform whatsoever is an extreme aberration. Far more frequent are people that pretend to be such and actually simply flip the expected behaviour from a conformist norm and behave in a different way but still conforming to some social group.
Sure, they're individuals, just like the other members of their subculture / social clique, etc.