Comparative And Normative Function As A Standard Of Behavior

“Life in society requires consensus as an indispensable conditions. But consensus, to be productive, requires that each individual contribute independently out of his experience and insight. (…) We have found that tendency to conformity in our society so strong that reasonably and well- meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern” (Salomon E. Asch “Opinion and Social Pressure” pp.730). The experiment has proven that we live in times where opinion become very subjective and can be easily modified. Social techniques are wildly used in marketing and sales or even by lobbyist in governmental decision making process. The uncertainty of people own senses, opinion or knowledge can be easily abused. Asch’s experiment implements how people believe in the obvious lies. It’s shows simple ways of influencing perception, judgment and action. Results of this experiment trigger a number of social and scientifically researches like study of Berns

The five social norms that I am glad exist are the standards of personal space, the expected standard for personal hygiene, the expected standard for manners in public i.e. avoiding belching or flatulating in public areas, the norm of individual choices, and the social norm of education being a standard.

According to Irving Janes (1972), groupthink occurs when a group makes an irrational decision because of group pressure fostering and the deterioration of ‘mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgement” (Irving, Janis, Victims of groupthink, p.9). Social influence is the effect that people have upon the beliefs or behaviors of others (Aaronson, 2004). Both groupthink and social influence theory have a factor in what

The objective of norm in American, by Michael Schudson, explores how and why the objective norms developed in American journalism. Objective is one of the most important occupational values of American journalism, it can be identified by following measures: express allegiance, ethnographers’ observations and occupational routines, resist with the challenging behaviour, impersonality and non-partisanship in news content. Differencing from some scholars’ opinions that economic and technological change enhances the ethic of objective, Schudson thinks four conditions encourage the articulation of norms. Two of them are Durkheimian, the other two are Weberian. One of the Durkheimian conditions thinks the emergence of norm is to achieve

According to Gordon (1976), "It is clear to the teenager that he or she should have a date after school, and it is clear to the average man or woman that he should have a mate, family, a circle of friends." Cultural expectations for social relationships change with age. For instance, while it is appropriate for young children to have their primary emotional attachment to their parents, young adults are expected to develop new attachments to dating partners and later to a spouse. Therefore, Daniel Perlman and Letitia Anne Peplau stated that when a person's social relationships do not keep pace with age-related changes in normative standards for relationships, he or she is likely to feel

The Wall Street Journal article speaks upon social norms and how they come about. In the beginning of the article Wang analyzes how behavior is developed by what people deem to be appropriate, desirable, and correct. She goes on to indicate that psychologists are examining how, “the often-unspoken rules of a group, shape not just our behavior but also our attitudes.” She signifies how norms contribute to a central human social purpose, assisting us on who is in the group or who is merely an outsider to the norm. Wang informs us that little is known about how attitudinal norms are initiated in groups. Surprisingly, researchers say that those who devise the trend or norm are usually isolated from the group, being apart of the group might restrict one’s potential. Wang enlightens the reader that group pressure is a forceful pressure over health behaviors, for example, drug use and alcohol use. There is also another side to adapting into these social norms. Wang argues that, “observation of others' behavior can also result in misperceptions of the norm, which in turn can cause the actual norm

It was interesting to read about groupthink (pg. 213) because I’ve seen many cases in which individuals conform to an answer for the sake of keeping “the peace,” instead of pushing for accurate analysis and critical evaluation. Anyhow, signs of Closed-Mindedness, particularly – Stereotypes of outside groups - is the most ethical danger sign to my work team. However, it is more accurate to say that it is a combination between collective rationalization and stereotypes of outside groups.

One may find this interesting as it demonstrates the unconscious influence we are all subject to throughout life by the other members of our cultural group. Another factor that would make people more susceptible to group influence is the size of the group. While one may naturally think this seems obvious, with the more members in a group the more likely one is to be influenced, investigations have identified that a group of 3-5 is the ideal number for influence to occur. A group size of less than 3 people sees conformity significantly reduced (Bond, 2005), while there appears to be little difference in the effect of the size of the group once the group has reached a size of 5. One may challenge this, as it would seem to contradict slightly the phenomenon of de-individualisation which can see individuals doing things they would never dream of doing if acting independently, though as a result of the big group setting in which the individual finds themself, they lose their sense of individual identity and act in line with the crowd. One would expect this to occur much more readily when in a crowd of 20,000, as opposed to a group of 5. Above and beyond one’s cultural tendencies and the size of the group, there are

"Normative development" is viewed as events within a children’s development that correlate towards the matching ages, ability or skills known as the 'milestones approach' (Cherry, K (2017)). Within a child’s average development these skills are categorised under four main subtopics 1) Physical Development that includes the large motor skills used for tasks such sitting, walking, and crawling. As well as the fine motor skills that are precise movements such as grasping and picking up smaller objects. 2) Cognitive Milestones that are based around the idea of problem-solving; such as being able to learn and understand the alphabet as well as learning how to react to different situations including the correlation that may be linked to changing facial expression. 3) Social and Emotional development is centred on the basis of being able to gain a better understanding of personal emotions and those of others. Social milestones also help to explain a child’s interactions with others such as learning to play. Finally, 4) Communication milestones that involve non-verbal and verbal communication skills (Cherry, K (2017))

Social norms are people’s beliefs about the attitudes and behaviors that are normal, acceptable or even expected in a particular social context. In many situations people’s perceptions of these norms will greatly influence their behavior. When people misperceive the norms of their peer group—that is, when they inaccurately think an attitude or behavior is more (or less) common than is actually the case—they may choose to engage in behaviors that are in sync with those false norms.1 Pluralistic Ignorance is the term that is used in academia to discuss social norms theory and refers to the incorrect belief that one’s private attitudes, judgments or behaviors are different from others.

One of the dangers of collectivism is its ability to suffocate an individual’s ideas in order for the ideas of the rest of group to survive. In the early 1950s, Solomon E. Asch conducted a series of experiments to test the effect of peer pressure on the individual. A group of young men was gathered and everyone except for the individual being tested was told to give the wrong answer. The individual was asked to match the length of two lines, but under peer pressure “even when the difference between the lines was seven inches, there were still some who yielded to the error of the majority” (Asch 730). Despite knowing that the answer the group gave was wrong, the individual still said the wrong answer. He does this because while he knows that group answer is wrong, he also

Science is messy. Normative demarcation itself is so messy that I still cannot verbally explain the difference between science and pseudoscience to another person without talking for over an hour. I literally spent three hours talking with my grandfather about it and I still do not think he understood what I was trying to say. Then again, there is always that chance that I struggle to communicate with my family in similar ways that I have trouble communicating my ideas during in-class discussion. But even within our discussion, I do not feel like any of us would be able to explain normative demarcation and its application in simple terms. I would argue that territorial demarcation is also messy. Based on our in-class discussion, I would say territorial demarcation is too messy to even apply in hopes of making concise borders between each discipline. For example, psychology is a social science that cannot completely separate itself from the natural sciences or humanities. Psychology depends heavily on neurobiology and on the culture that the mind being studied resides in. The humanities, by extension, are just as messy. On a side note, I would also claim that life itself is messy. Whether it is setting a demarcation criteria for science and pseudoscience or trying to find out what you did to upset your spouse, there are too many variables to assume that there is a simple solution to a problem. Many problems are complex by nature and to automatically assume that a simple

Normative influence primarily occurs in situations where an individual, when amidst others in a crowd, tend to go along with them primarily in order to be liked and accepted by them as part of their fraternity. Research has identified that normative inference normally occurs as an inborn human nature as human beings tends to associate themselves with others in order to maintain a good social contact and relationship with them. Ideally, normative influence is normally furthered by the need for an individual to increase their chances of surviving especially during adverse conditions. This entails that people may at times seem to agree with others just in order for them to appease themselves to them and avoid potential conflict of standing alone and standing out. In some situations normative influence may occur where individuals associate with complete strangers. In such cases, due to mutual fear for each other, an individual may naturally try to agree with the rest in order to avoid appearing as contradictory or controversial.

Perhaps one of the most interesting topics in social psychology is the concept of cognitive dissonance. One of the first people to define this concept was Leon Festinger, and it is described as, “the result of an inconsistency between two or more cognitions—that is, one cognition follows from the opposite of the other” (McKimmie, 2015, p. 202). According to Festinger, people long for consistency in their environment, and they begin to feel uncomfortable with all the dissonant cognitions present in their views about the world and about themselves (Scott-Kakures, 2009, p. 77). When presented with these contradictory thoughts and beliefs, a person will attempt to either reduce the cognitions, or will misinterpret the thoughts, or will strive to gain others’ support (Scott-Kakures, 2009). Since people frequently encounter information that is contradictory, they may try to persuade themselves that their belief is the correct one (Liu & Keng, 2014, p. 980). In order to eliminate these cognitive dissonances, the person must reduce the number of the contrasting cognitions and increase the number of consonant cognitions (Scott-Kakures, 2009). Leon Festinger’s perspective on cognitive dissonance has had a profound impact on social psychology, as he attempted to determine the effect cognitive dissonance had on a person’s self-concept, and one study from Social Psychology Network that best aligns with Festinger’s theory is “The Perception of Social Group Attitudes” from University of

Although much of the previous literature has focused on perceptions of norms (i.e., individual-level norms), it is important to further examine collective norms (i.e., setting-level norms). Setting-level norms are collective and emerge through shared communication among members of a setting, unlike personal norms that exist at the individual level and setting-level norms represent perceptions of collective norms (Lapinski & Rimal, 2005). This approach to studying social settings is consistent with