Conformity And Personal Conformity

It can be seen in our everyday lives how easy it is for people to conform to the social norms of a group or society. Wayne Dyer once said “When you're just like everybody else, you've nothing to offer other than your conformity” and I believe that this statement couldn’t be more accurate. Recently, it has become more acceptable for people to express their individuality and showing one’s true colours is being promoted. It is better to be a unique individual than to conform to society because conformity destroys personal growth and development. We need to express our originality and by conforming to what others want us to be, we squander any chance of achieving self-acceptance. People are more likely to conform is when they are placed in a group setting. An individual will not want to break the group unanimity so they will conform to whatever decision the group comes to, even if it goes against their beliefs or values. I firmly believe that if we pay less attention to what others expect of us and expressing our individuality, we can offer more to society and develop and grow as human beings.

I formally agree with most of what Feys conveys as his ideas of conformity and why in our society it is a big deal of whether or not people should conform by the will of others. Feys main argument against the normality of conformity is when he states, “ Living in society, we are under constant pressure to surrender our individuality to the will of the majority.” Most people of society have agreed to this statement without replying to this direct comment but everyone knows the idea of peer-pressure in which an individual is emotionally pushed to do something that was not wanted of them. We see the issues of peer pressure in a number of places, for example, in a study by Thomas J Berndt a professor of developmental psychology conducted an experiment

Many people have been affected in some shape or form by others around them. Social influence has many different parts to it and affects our everyday lives.

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 is a social influence in where we tend to change our beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes to align them with group norms. (Conformity & Obedience, n.d) In 1932, Jenness was the first psychologist to study the psychological force of conformity, and his experiment was based on group conformity and how a majority decision can influence an individual’s rational thought. (S, McLeod. 2007) The psychological force of conformity is powerful, whether it is obvious social pressure or subconscious influence. Conformity can be a good or bad influence depending on the situation, and though conformity can affect all ages, it is mostly seen in adolescence. Everybody has experienced conformity at one point in their life,

The late 18th Century in American history was dominated by an era of emotional and individualistic values of oneself, and a powerful sense of limitless possibilities. This was the Romanticism Period. An incredible number of miraculous masterpieces were contrived during this period of enlightenment, including Nathaniel Hawthorne’s dramatically thematic and ambiguous short story, “Young Goodman Brown”, as well as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s intriguingly influential and uplifting essay, “Self-Reliance”. Hawthorne’s writing aspires to implicate theories and themes about the reality of the world we live in and to illustrate our individual limitations through the art of symbolism and irony. Emerson uses

Conformity to human constructs is an essential aspect of software. As with anything constructed by and for human use, we wish to understand and use it easily. Software, above all else, is incredibly easy to change. These means that, unlike a physical structure that naturally degrades, software only changes when it is purposefully changed by a human actor. As such, it can be easily changed, either during creation, or maintenance, to reflect human constructs meant to contain and help understand it as a grows in complexity. Software is made to be used by some human or computer actor. These requires it to conform not only to a thing we can understand, but also to something that is known in how it will react to, communicate with, and handle data

When it comes to most social situations, group or peer pressure are almost always present in some way. Generally an individual receives the most pressure from one’s primary group. However, as one gets older, the secondary groups become sometimes more prominent and can change the obligation. There is a certain dependency that one has on each group, hence the obligation, and if everyone in that group was supporting a choice that was against an individuals beliefs, they are more likely to overlook right and wrong and go with the group. In todays society being needed or belonging is valued and I think that this is a factor in conformity. Additionally, in society’s norms, we are our groups. Each group could be completely unrelated, but we would

In 1932, Jenness became the first psychologist to study conformity, which involved an experiment with basic materials and little ethical treatment (Jenness). The participants were asked to examine a jar of beans. They were then told to make an estimate of how many beans were inside of the jar. The participants were not informed of intentions of the study, thus full consent was invalid. When they were exposed to the estimates of other participants before making an individual guess, most participants’ estimations differed from the norm, and a shift occurred from the first estimates to the cluster of numbers within the pool of peer responses. This result led Jenness to form the idea of informational conformity,

Mass public schooling has created a divide amongst the foundation of whether to prioritize individuality or conformity. If we as a society choose to base schooling off of the guidelines of conformity, the individuality in each and every student will soon be lost due to being forced to comply to the school system, therefore hindering student’s sense of individuality. Prioritizing individuality in the schools allows students to be free of constraints, and to increase their want to learn through being able to differentiate and personalize their schedules. An education system based off of forcing individual and different students to all follow the exact same course standard should be outlawed due to this being an outdated guideline of teaching.

Social psychology is the scientific study of how social groups affect an individual’s behavior, way of thinking, and feelings. There are millions of people in the world we live in and those people impact us at every stage of our lives. Babies look to the adults which influences their actions and even personality. Adults have to interact with others on a daily basis. Conforming is an example of how this works. When someone or a group of people do one thing, there is an urge in the individual to do the same thing. Now, whether that same thing is as simple as looking up at a cloud or joining the rioters who are smashing windows and beating people, can have varying degrees of conformity. Women seem to be more apt to conform than that of their male

Influencing others within ethical or unethical frameworks is part of everyday life. In order to persuade people to do something for their own benefit or for the benefit of others like the formation of relationships, selling products, or passing ideas, people use different ways of persuasion resulting to the change of attitudes and consequently result in achieving what they want.

Interestingly, there are norms that define appropriate behavior for every social group; even though, such social norms are not a law. For instance, neighbors, students, co-workers, parents etc. are all aware of the norms governing behavior. However, as the individual progress from one group to another, their behavior changes accordingly. Therefore, as a human being is essential to meditate in those social norms to guide and direct one behavior, to provide order and cultivate predictability; and understanding of others actions. Moreover, such reasons would benefit one relationships with people, thus, conform to social norms.

I agree with you that peer pressure is one of the reason why people conform. Peer pressure could make people do things that are not correct. Many people fall into peer pressure to fit in, to please the person who is pressuring them and to get the person to leave them alone. I have known people who have tried to pressure me but I do not fall into it, because the things that people pressure you for could get you in trouble. I also believe that confidence plays a part when it comes to people going along with everybody else. I believe confidence plays a part because if you have confidence in yourself, you would be able to say your answer without worrying about being wrong or correct.

The term ambition is almost always considered as a negative characteristic. Being ambitious seems to be linked to greed and a more similar meaning to being a non-conformist is left aside, something that may be very necessary and act as the engine of a business activity. Because ambition is not only restricted to the desire to accumulate wealth or power, it can be found in the desire to be better every day, to seek new challenges and fight for them, without having to trample others or not have scruples to reach your goals.