Analysis Of Nietzsche's Unconscious Herds

Are you the type of person to make decisions based off of the group you're involved with, or do you go your own way and make your own decisions? Whether being involved in a group, or you tend to be a follower, those certain things have a bigger influence on how someone acts, compared to individual human views, that can be founded off of social psychology. Being involved with the group, has the biggest impact on how people choose to obey or disobey certain actions because of the societal pressure, family and religious backgrounds, and having the fear of not fitting in, or conforming.

Throughout history the benefit of fitting within a social group has been discernable. That old adage “We’re stronger together” has had its roots in the very conception of society. You can accomplish more with a group of people than you can alone. The more this group of people expands, the more intricate their function in the society becomes, and therefore, the more influential that society is. However, what happens when, within the complex labyrinth of society and the members needed to keep its mechanisms moving, that society is faced with a piece it cannot work in to its machinery? The great coils of that society shutter at that idiosyncrasy, they ostracize it, but what

In the Stanford prison experiment, Zimbardo analyzes how human behavior can change based one’s surroundings and what they are told to do. Normal college students are given roles to play in a mock prison. In this experiment, people are assigned jobs as prison guards and prisoners. The prison guards quickly adapted to their roles. They saw no problem treating the prisoners with no respect. These students use violence against the other students to show their leadership and dominance. The prisoners quickly got accustomed to their parts as well.The prisoners believed that they deserved the punishment. “The experiment shows that good people under the wrong circumstances can behave just like those that we vilify” (Zimbardo). With this experiment, Zimbardo studies the Lucifer Effect. The Lucifer Effect is understanding how good people become evil. He uses his data from this experiment to further develop the Lucifer Effect theory and find out why the Nazis treated the Jews with such cruelty. His results show that when given the opportunity and in the right environment, humans will dehumanize other

Although each author approaches remolding from a different viewpoint, the underlying theme is an imbalance of power between groups and individuals. We constantly internalize other opinions about ourselves and reflect our response through our actions. However, because it is a reflection of how others perceive us, individuals ultimately do not possess the power groups do in order to mold their own identities. This idea of “lack of power” lingers through an individual’s consciousness and convinces them they have no control over their external environment, which becomes the foundation of a heightened openness to conformity. Due to the instability of an identity and a group’s over exerting power, a human’s desire to fit into a group is maximized and the identity become susceptible to conformity. The internal instability also influences those individuals to make choices they usually would not make, thus repressing their inner identities, and becoming a reflection of their outer-group influences. However, individuals can restore their power with a shift towards democratization and its

Groupthink can be defined as a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in irrational decision-making. In 1971, twenty-four psychologically stable men took part in a trial known as The Stanford Prison Experiment. The purpose of the experiment was to prove that an individual’s perception of their own power is heavily influenced by social context and societal expectations of their role. The men involved in the experiment were assigned either the role of a prisoner or a guard to represent positions in society, both with power and without. More specifically, the conductors of The Stanford Prison Experiment focused on analyzing the different behavioral

When people are part of a group, they often start to deviate from their personalities, and tend to focus on the opinions and actions of the group. Groups can generate a sense of engaging energy, which can lead to behaviors that a person would not typically engage in if they were alone. People seem to believe that certain behaviors are acceptable when they are in groups that would otherwise not be acceptable if they were alone. Many people believe they cannot be held responsible for their actions when they are with a group because they see the

Solomon Asch was a psychologist that conduced numerous expirments designed to illustrate the increasing conformity within social groups. The experiments also invesigated the effect the number of people present within the group had one the conformity rate. Asch hypothesized, “ that the majority of the people would not conform to something obviosly wrong; however, when surrounded by (other) individuals all voicing an incorrect answer, 75% of them(the participant) will conform to the groups answer” (Watzlawick 1976)

The contents of this assignment will include multiple psychological theories to explain what ways an individual’s behaviour changes when he/she is part of a group. These theories will define social influence, conformity procedures within groups and social cognition, including the self-categorisation theory. Social groups are used in everyday living to represent beliefs, to work, play and to socialise. Groups can have a negative effect on an individual. Not been part of a group due to exclusion or stereotyping can create a negative effect.

Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and

As human beings, each person on earth possesses a desire to belong. In order to meet this need, one must find a way to fit in with a group. Yet somehow, once a group has been joined, humans tend to take on the ideas and opinions of the group without analyzing the situation for themselves. Doris Lessing, in her essay, “Group Minds”, proposes the idea that humans spend their whole life going along with the group because they fail to analyze the reasons behind their actions. While Lessing’s idea is valid, no one has yet successfully implemented her plan.

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

In conclusion there has been evidence to show that groups have both a negative and also a positive effect on its members. It has been demonstrated that some people will cope with the negative effects in an unproductive way by changing their behaviour in way that was detrimental to the well being of themselves and its other members. However the positives can have a very powerful effect on a person in that it can promote a sense of identity, loyalty and

‘social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders. From this point of vie, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of the rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’. The deviant is one to whom the label has successfully been applied, deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label. (Becker 1963, pg 9)

One of the facets of living within civilized society is that there are certain norms and social conventions that people must follow. Frequently, there is a large effort on the part of government, financial, and social institutions to keep people doing most of the same thing as others going to work, driving cars, buying homes, etc. Despite the fact that people engage in these efforts individually, the simple fact that they are all attempting to do the same thing, in much the same way, is indicative of the fact that they are engaged in collective behavior. THESIS: Those who are able to overcome collective behavior and allow for their individuality to determine their own outcomes exemplify the best of human nature.

As conformity becomes ever more common within a society, individuals isolate themselves, but only because the conformists have lost their ability to reflect on their decisions. Similarly, while Bernard and Lenina watch the sea in peace, he makes comments about individuality and its benefits, which startles Lenina, who exclaims, “And how can you talk like that about not wanting to be a part of the social body? After all, every one works for everyone else” (Huxley 91). Here, Lenina is absolutely shocked that Bernard would not want to be with everyone else. However, the sole reason why people only want to conform is that they cannot begin to express their own thoughts and feelings. A person’s individuality is what sets them apart from the rest of society, and when taken away, they become generic. Even though conforming can cause a lot of problems in a person, they are able to agree with a group of people and are able to convey ideas clearly as well as not feel left out. Furthermore, in the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula Le Guin, there are many examples of conformity when it comes to witnessing the child that is responsible for the “happiness” in