Human beings are defined as ''social animals'' because in every aspects of life they live together, they form a variety of groups and improve relationships with each other. Interaction with others is a natural result of living in society. In the process of interaction, society and its rules has a social impact on each individual. If people face with any kind of social impact such as group pressure, great part of them show conformity by changing their behaviors, ideas, decisions in expected way. A person conforms if he or she chooses a course of action that a majority favors or that is socially acceptable. Some kind of conformity is natural and socially healthy but obeying all the norms, ideas, and decisions without thinking or accepting …show more content…
We must decide for ourselves whether to conform to such a social etiquette. We are taught as soon as we are old enough to grasp the idea that it is bad to be unique and to avoid being different. At some point, however, we must decide within ourselves whether to spend every day trying to be like everyone else because society says we should or living each day true to ourselves. Our strength as a person is proven through what we decide. The benefits of being true to ourselves greatly outweigh any negative aspects of choosing that path.
One of the most obvious advantages of being true to ourselves is that people will see us, perhaps for the first time, without a mask. People will see what we are really like on the inside. They will see our talents, imperfections, and preferences. Then they will have the opportunity to accept us on our own terms. As we work to show our true selves to society, we may discover things about ourselves we did not already know. If we want to be great, we can safely assume that we must be willing to be misunderstood. However, we cannot be misunderstood if we conform to the standards of society. If we act and think and talk exactly as everyone else, we will never run the risk of being taken the wrong way.
Second, society teaches us to conform by not thinking for ourselves. We are simply told how to solve a problem or accomplish a task. We are never taught why
But conforming to what the majority is doing because it is deemed as cool is a whole different story. Instead of conforming to keep society running smoothly, we sometimes conform due to fear that we will receive hateful backlash for breaking against the norm or in fear that we will be wrong. Solomon Asch explains the latter reason when he conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform. In his experiment, there was only one true participant and 4 other fake participants that will help prove his point correct. Cards were shown to everyone where there were lines of different length illustrated. They all had to choose which line was the longest. The first four people at the table were the fake participants and purposely chose the wrong answers. The last person was the true participant in the experiment and in all of the experiments they conducted, the last person always went with what the rest of the group thought even though he knew that the answer was incorrect. After the experiment was conducted, the real participants were interviewed and asked why they went along with everyone else even though they knew the answer was incorrect. “Most of them said that they did not really
My mother has always told me that certain things should not be done in public. Social norms are opinions and beliefs that are shared amongst a group. Throughout our lives our parents tell us things that aren’t socially acceptable, and that there are consequences for those actions. Those that don’t act in ways that are socially acceptable are isolated from society. Norms help to guide the general public by reinforcing it with a punishment in waiting.
Humans often act in ways they know to be incorrect or wrong for their own social benefit, often because we fear being different. One example of this is the Asch Conformity Experiment, where 75% of participants would choose the wrong answer on an obvious question just to not stand out from the crowd. After the experiment, all said they felt self-conscious and feared disapproval from the group. Another example is when those in a social group have preferences or choices differ from the rest of the group, they will often conform to the rest of the group's opinion. Nobody wants to be the only person to dislike a certain food or think a certain way, they fear they will be judged negatively for it. As social creatures, we seek for and strive other
Because humans crave attention of others, they live their life and conform to whatever the majority of the people around them says. Asch’s Conformity Experiment, which was when they hired eight actors and one test subject and gave them all a test and told the eight actors to say the wrong answer, they found that the test subject would usually conform to the majority vote even if it was wrong. This showed us that people would usually conform to the majority answer on a test, even if it was wrong. Even in high school, students conform to make themselves look cool and conform to things even if they know it’s wrong. Asch’s experiment and american high schools prove to us that humans don’t want to stand out and we just want to fit in and get attention.
On one hand, society argues that they are all distinct individuals and they are leaders who do not follow the crowd. On the other hand, a small percentage of society contends that many people like to think they are diverse, but in reality many are scared to stand away from the crowd and take action by themselves. In the article ¨The Sociology of Leopard Man, Logan Feys expresses that ¨ Society looks down upon freakish and extraordinary individuals alike and views them with suspicion. Ordinary people fear what they don’t understand¨(par.4). I agree with the author because some people do not understand that they conform all the time and they fear that they are not an individual. Feys also explains that ¨ Conformity can be seen as the world’s most common but dangerous psychological disorder. To be human is to be an individual human, with individual tastes, talents, values, and dreams that are distinct from those of others.¨ I would also agree with that statement by Feys because I believe that people want to feel special and unique, but in reality people conform almost all the time. To realize that conformity can be dangerous and to realize that you conform is important to withstanding
Humans make all sorts of implications, different types directed to variant people. However, in this case three sources go in depth and analysis how conformity can create boundaries or barriers between you and society. Today, the influences of social pressure on rejection or acceptance can drastically modify someones perception or behavior. Moreover, we tend to oblige to norm. With limitations and boundaries authoritatively mandating us to differentiate right from wrong or whether to look left or right, it is almost to easy to blend along side of others. It seems like society's standards control our future actions. It is almost impossible to sustain a pristine thought.
So why exactly do we conform? Author Doris Lessing provides an answer to this question in her article, “Group Minds.” Lessing describes how westerners conform and how it affects their individuality. Social psychologist at Rutgers University, Solomon Asch provides similar ideas, but in a more scientific manner. In his article, “Opinions and Social Pressure,” Asch studies how men conform to the social pressures of a group.
The well known essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, exerted his beliefs that conformity is something that independent individuals should not participate in through out his essay of “Self Reliance”. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines conformity as, “behavior that is the same as the behavior of most other people in a society, group, etc.” (“Conformity”). Emerson’s primary concern with conformity was the overbearing control that society had on a free individual. I agree that we should not change our morals and values if pressured from outside forces.
"People don't talk about anything...and nobody says anything different from anyone else" This quote, from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, demonstrates how this fictional society had no individuality, yet they expressed no disprovement of the conformity. To be so simple minded as this civilization was would have eventually lead to self-destruction. To support my theory, recall in the novel when the old lady chose to commit suicide because she did not have freedom. She felt that even though she was "free" she was "enslaved" by the enforcement of limited knowledge.
Conformity becomes a bad thing when we start to conform in place of thinking to belong to a group or so as not to be different. When this happens we tend to take on the
In today's day and age contemporary society's are built upon the thought of citizen conformity to a prescribed set of values and norms to. This idea of complies to social standards makes one think as to how these norms of fact society as a whole and an individual. The main driving component which draws people too conformity are the desire to be excepted in certain status groups. People fear that if they do not conformity is norms that they will be breaking the social contract therefore been shunned by society at not being able to achieve their personal goals. Further analysis of these forces for conformity in contemporary society it will be shown that these forces produced negative ethical conduct and
Through the eyes of the majority, conformity is seen as something as that of a necessity. However if we, as individuals, uphold the very chains that bind us we will lose the very distinctiveness we originally sought after. With this in mind, individuality comes at a price. If one were to choose not to act accordingly to acceptable conventions, they would be ostracized. The reason we choose conformity is to keep the stability of our society constant.
Conforming to social ideals is essential to exist in today’s society. However, there is a point
First and foremost, if being different makes you happy then be different. An example of being yourself is standing up for what you believe in. Like Rosa Parks, an african american civil rights leader, she didn't give up her seat to a white man even though it was the law. She refused to give her seat up and changed how america
Norms are viewed as important rules and beliefs set by the society as their way of not only shaping a group but more importantly as their way of maintaining order. More often than not, these rules and expectations are implicitly dictated by the society and are valued as a standard how an individual should behave or dress. At times, expected behaviors are explicitly set by the group. Some sociologists believe norms are created by individuals in order to promote order in a group. On the other hand, some scholars argue that social norms are created primarily to stimulate roles, thus reinforcing the stability of a social class. Although the reason behind the emergence and reality of norms are unclear, what is certain is that these norms are