Conformity Essay In society, people enjoy rallying behind characters who lead rebellions and revolutions in pop culture, but in real life many prefer those who don’t “rock the boat” even to the point of ignoring objective facts. Peer pressure, self-preservation, and a desire to be like everyone else are the reasons people conform when they have objective facts to say they shouldn’t. In many instances peer pressure causes people to go against objective facts that they know to be true. On the game show Divided, contestants must all lock in the same answer to trivia questions, the faster they do it the more money they receive. I’ve seen an episode before where one person knew the correct answer, but everyone else was sure it was something else. The incorrect people eventually convinced the person with the correct answer to change their response to what everyone else had. This lead to the team getting the question wrong; if the correct person had argued their point further, then the team could have had more money. In one experiment ordinary people had to listen to a person sitting in a different room repeating a list of words. If the person repeating the words messed up the test subject was told to press a button, following the button a scream could be heard. Each time the person …show more content…
In society there is a history of those who go against societal norms facing punishments. One example is Galileo; after making many discoveries about our planet and outer space Galileo was eager to get this new information to everyone. The church- mad that he was preaching things that wasn’t in the Bible- killed him as a punishment. Despite the fact that Galileo was correct in his knowledge, the church thought he couldn’t possibly be correct, because they only believed what was in the bible and what Galileo was saying was something
As a student, I am often troubled by the rigid routines of the school day, despite the fact that I am actually a very habitual person. The constant ringing of bells, lectures, bellwork, classwork, homework, each a daily practice throughout the school year. Although all of these components promote conformity, which will ultimately support the balance of school and societal norms, they also tend to threaten each student’s own unique characteristics. This then poses the question; to what degree should schools encourage conformity versus individuality? Certainly, a level of conformity is required to achieve a balanced society however, the overall structure of the school day and class, including the methods used to teach and mandatory classes,
Conformity is a highly powerful being. Conformity alone can destroy entire civilizations, crush large empires, and cause many of the world’s greatest leaders to fall. But conformity exists in varying degrees from that which persuades a child to bully a peer to that which convinces a politician to act on an issue like the rest of his party. Yet, no matter how great the degree of conformity, there is always an essence on the inside that causes one to question the acts they perform. It is that tension that arises between conformity and inward questioning that makes a human human. Imagine a society where everyone conformed; there would be no individualism and freedom of expression. But imagine a world where everyone questioned; the world would
According to Margaret Drabble, ¨Our desire to conform is greater than our respect for objective facts,¨ a theme which has been proven in the short stories ¨Shooting an Elephant¨ by George Orwell, ¨The Lottery¨ by Shirley Jackson, and ¨Who Killed Benny Paret¨ by Norman Cousins. Each story displays a different type of conformity, but they all illustrate people disrespecting the objective facts leading to disregarding the result of destruction or loss.
Should I conform? Should I rebel? This has and always will be, a constant battle struggled individually, or as a society. A certain amount of conformity needs to exist in life in order to avoid disorder. This is the reason we have laws. Take those laws, rules, control, or even expectations, to an extreme, and some form of rebellion is probable. Struggle with these opposites, and you have a catalyst for war, or perhaps, being fired from a job. Literature represents life, and this theme can be found at the root of many literary works.
In the article title “Individuality vs. Conformity: The Healthy Middle?” by an anonymous high school student it says that there are only two thing that a typical high school student wants to typically achieve in their short high school life (par. 1). One of these things is to fit in (par. 2). The second one is to be different (par. 3). How could you do this?. You could choose to be individual or just conform. However I really maintain the idea that what we should really do it's to stay in the middle so we won't forget who we really are and still be liked by different groups of people.
Did their wrong answers influence the other group members’ responses? The results of the experiment showed that seventy-five percent of the people went along with whatever answer was given by the majority of the group. The results of this experiment are very shocking, not everyone wants to admit that they conform but the most of us do. This can be applied to just about any situation, but the first situation that pops into my mind is peer pressure. Many teenagers and even young adults have been peer pressured into positions that they could not see their way out of, or thought it was okay as long as everyone else was doing it. The power of conformity is so influential on the grounds that fear of public ridicule or humiliation one may feel if they do not conform, is so strong.
Do we conform? Five paragraph essay quiz. In our society in the day and age, we have thousands of things to form opinions about on a day to day basis. But larger than those are the things that we form opinions on that define us. These include political issues, religion, and views on society and how it functions.
Obedience and Conformity Both obedience and conformity involve social pressure in obedience the pressure comes from behaving as you are instructed to do; whereas in conformity the pressure comes from group norms Behaviour in obedience is determined by social power, whereas in conformity it is influenced mostly by the need for acceptance. In nearly all societies, certain people are given power and authority over others. Our society, for example, parents, teachers, and managers are invested with various degrees of authority. Most of the time, this does not cause any problems.
I have always believed that you have a choice in this world. When I was a child, I used to think “The more you look like other people, The more people will like you”. Although I should know better by now, I cannot help believing I should have copied people when I should have been myself that whole time. At the same time that I believed in coping other people, I also believed it was wrong to confirmed and everyone liked me but I didn't even like myself. I started to hate myself.
Conformity defined by Saul McLeod is, “Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group. This change is in response to real (involving the physical appearance of others) or imagined (involving the pressure of social norms/expectations) group pressure.” (McLeod, 2007, para. 1 & 2). Meaning, that an individual has the desire to change themselves either mentally or physically to meet the social status quo. Reflecting back on one’s childhood, the mentality that always seemed to make itself present was being a leader and not a follower, regardless of the situation or aspect. It seemed to commonly be followed by, “if (whoever at time) jumped off a bridge would one follow”? One remembers badly wanting a different hairstyle or to dress a particular way because everyone else had it or was doing it. However, one also remembers the individuals that did not try to conform to anything just because everyone was doing it or it was the fad at the time, those individuals might have been viewed as the rebels. As one has gotten older, looking back it is almost as if it should have been the rebels that were the ones everyone was envious of. Personally, however,
Social psychology plays an important role in aspects of our everyday lives from the decisions we make to shaping our personality and behaviour. In this paper I will discuss a pressing example of one which is latest and most controversial presedential election that occurred in November at the resulting actions of the American people. These psychological concepts played a crucial role in many ways such as molding the voters’ minds which determined their actions and behaviours and playing on the psychology of the candidate’s opponents to gain the upper hand. The concepts I will discuss are the primacy vs recency effect, conformity, and various techniques in persuasion. Finally I will talk about how these techniques could be resisted and a more global use of these factors.
First, every individual has a desire to be correct. An individual stands to be correct and accurate in both their observations and judgments. It’s often, one depends on the social cues that are around to help in making interpretations of a given situation. It’s observed that, when a task that is not difficult is imposed to an individual, their morale to correctly do the task lessens the effect of a pressure from a group that answers it wrongfully (Basil 264). Even though each person answers differ, the subject knows the correct answer and feels less pressure to side with the group
Conformity is the act of changing your behavior to match the behaviors of others (Kenrick ,179). We are closing in on the end of the U.S. presidential election, and in less than four months I will go to the polls with many others of my peers and vote. As a fourth year political science major I have a firm grasp of how to research candidates but in the earlier part of the year I did not have time, as I had a twenty-hour schedule. Yet when my friends started talking about Bernie sanders I felt pressure to add my voice in the mix but I did not know much about any of the Democratic Party candidates, excepting Hilary Clinton. In response I copied what my friends were saying, I allowed their opinions to shape mine and in doing so I gave up my individual choice to better fit what my group of friends was choosing. Eventually I sat down and formed my own opinions through research. I question how many citizens vote based on their own research or if they vote based on how
One reason under social pressure is conformity, which is to change the belief or opinion in someone to fit into a group of people. I took a psychology class in high school my junior year. My teacher put up the line test on the board and had us do 6 running tests. He took random students from the hallway and had them sit in the back of the class. During the first few test
Y. Cho _ O.-B. Chung (&) Department of Home Economics Education, Korea University, An investigation on the relationship between conformative peer bullying and issues of peer conformity among adolescents. Anam-dong Seongbuk-Gu, Seoul 136-701, Korea.