According to Mark Twain, a famous literary author “We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going and then go with the drove” (Kassin, Fien, & Markus, 2011 p. 251).
The quote by Mark Twain is how conformity works, this does not mean that people are not individuals, but as people they see what others are doing and they follow along. Social psychologists since the early 1930’s have tried to understand why people change their minds and conform to a group setting. Since then there have been multiple studies conducted on conformity and what makes these people conform to another. These studies have also focused on several different areas of conformity; group size, gender roles, obedience, and compliance. Even though conformity is
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Conformity is the tendency to change our perceptions, opinions, or behavior in ways that are consistent with group norms (Kassin, Fien, & Markus, 2011 p. 254). Gender Role: The public image of being male or female that a person presents to others (dictionary.com). This paper will define conformity, the types of conformity; normative and informative, why people conform and what affect gender roles have on it. When looking at people one would think that they are individuals which think and do things on their own, however, while doing their individual activities they are being influenced on the outside by either one person or a group of people, known as conformity. People do not realize that they are conforming when they are following simple rules like standing in a line or following laws. This is due to the social norm of everyday life. As defined by www.dictionary.com (2014) a social norm is an expected form of behavior in a given situation. Social …show more content…
There are several different factors that play into why someone conforms. Group size is a large part of why a person will conform, while other factors are informative and normative. The Sherif and Asch studies demonstrate that people conform for two very different reasons: informative and normative (Kassin, Fien, & Markus, 2011 p. 257). Think about a big game, football, baseball, soccer. A group stands up and starts yelling defense, then others join in, soon the entire section is yelling defense. Everyone that joined in was influenced by the group of people that stood up. When there is more than one person doing something there is higher possibilities that people with conform to what that group of people is doing. Going to the bathroom, if all the toilets are taken, a line forms, this a social norm and people conform to standing in a line. Informative influence is when people want to be right because the rest of the group agreed on it, this is them wanting to make a correct judgment on a topic. This is why when a crime happens the police want to separate the witnesses before they begin talking with others, once they talk to another witness their interpretation of the event get skewed because of the informational influence from the other. Normative influence is a person wanting to feel they are normal in a group. The person does not want to be wrong so they agree with the rest. This fear of being
Many people have trouble being apart of a society. These troubles come from trying to fit in, which is also known as conforming. Another trouble is trying to express one’s own style with one’s own opinion. This is a trouble due to the fact that many people have the fear of being frowned upon when being the black sheep of the group if one’s opinion does not correspond with other opinions. This is where one’s own sense of who they are, individuality, and trying to fit in, conformity, can get confused. A nickname for conformity is “herd behavior” which is the name of an article where the author relates animals that herd with people that conform. Many people have a different philosophy of this topic which will be expressed in this essay. An important
“Things like morals, religion, and politics, get their following from surrounding influences and atmospheres.” (pg. 4) Twain says this to show that anything you can possibly think of, even things commonly found in everyday life stemmed from some sort of opinion. Furthermore, he asserts that self-approval is achieved mainly through public approval, which is the definition of conformity. Paragraph seven states that political emergencies create the greatest example of conformity because being in the majority means that you’ll never be in the wrong.
Pursuing a personal desire and choosing to conform to societal expectations is a challenging decision to make. A person must decide if their personal desire is worth risking the shame and judgment of others or is conforming the route to take because it is easier. When pursuing a personal desire one must ask itself if it is worth the hardship to accomplish one's desire or if it is best left alone and repressed, in hopes of finding comfort in conformity. John Laroche from The Orchid Thief expresses his personal desire without a care for conformity or societal expectations. Nevertheless, Laroche never stopped being strange as he grew up with fascinations of many objects such as orchids, turtles, old mirrors and fish tanks.
In society, it's difficult to go against the norm. Individuals are compelled to act a specific way, or look a specific way in order to be accepted. For instance, teenagers may encounter pressure from their peers to partake in specific exercises that may not be moral, since they feel the need to fit in. This weight of conformity isn't just present in reality; it can be found in literature as well. The story "St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell depicts that in order to conform to society, individuals abandon their selflessness and compassion and become selfish and apathetic.
The definition of conformity is the compliance with social standards and laws in a particular culture, environment, society and time. If this occurs the individual changes their attitudes, beliefs or actions to align more holistically with those in the surrounding groups and environment, as a result of real or perceived group pressure. This is ultimately a direct result of the power which a group has over the individual. There are two types of conformity, normative conformity, and informational conformity. The motivation behind normative conformity is the desire to be liked and accepted in society. This is most widely known as peer pressure. For example, a student begins smoking because their peers
Mark Twain writes this essay in order to shed light onto his belief that people’s thoughts and actions are influenced by those around them. His belief that people conform to the rest of society fuels his essay. This can be seen when Twain includes his idea that “It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not many can successfully resist” (718). Twain shows that people are beginning to conform without using their own minds to process their decision.
As we grow up we are told to be individuals, but once we grow up we obey authority figures and change our beliefs to fit in with others. No matter what age we are we will always comply to a behavior or belief to fit in with a group different than ours or to be liked. We do not like to be judged or looked at as an outsider; this will remain the same in which ever situation we find ourselves in. Whether it be in a professional setting such as work or a social setting with friends. When thinking of conformity and obedience we mostly think of cults and prisons but it is not always the case.
(Myers, 651) It is the result of the human need and desire to fit in and not stray from societal standards. After Solomon Asch’s experiments, it became evident that there was a certain discomfort affiliated with being outside of the group’s popular idea that causes the uncomfortable person to conform to the ideas of the group. This is more likely if the group has more than three people, they are unanimous, and they are admired by the conforming person. Social influence is also a contributing factor as to why people conform. Roles and norms are set out for society and make it hard for people to veer from them. The normative social influence causes people to follow these norms to avoid their drastic fear of being left out. (Myers, 653) Another type of social influence would be the informational social influence, which results in people adopting others’ opinions and beliefs of the world around them. These two influences show the ominous presence of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In order to satisfy a person’s higher level needs, such as self-actualization and esteem, the lower level needs must first be met, such as hunger and safety. (Myers, 330) A low level need is belongingness. People want to feel like they belong and feel loved in order to avoid isolation. This desire is one factor that directly causes conformity. In order to avoid being left out and lonely, a person willingly accepts another person’s opinions and thoughts even if they are the opposite of their own or if they know they are wrong. Conformity is due to the person being in an unfamiliar situation, being ignorant on the topic, wanting to impress and be liked by the members of the group, and being willing to conform their opinion on themselves. (Zimbardo, 2006) To avoid conformity, the person must identify what their actual
It is human nature to do this, but this does not mean it is necessary or even beneficial to our lives. An example of this tendency to conform is politics, in our government there are two main parties the Democratic and Republican Party. These parties throughout history have had ever changing views and stances on social issues and with these changing views are the votes of the public should change with the parties. Unfortunately, due to our human nature, there is a want to associate with a certain group, although their perspective upon social matters has long changed, but because of our readiness to blindly conform people state that they are a Republican/Democrat and always have been. This mindset that people tend to follow must come to an end as it is of no benefit to society. Society conforming to this trend leads to the misrepresentation of the public. This issue of our human nature to conform to a certain opinion while it has no benefit to the community must come to an end in order for the society to improve and become more
One device Twain uses to develop his view on conformity is repetition. While discussing man’s inability of having a self-created opinion, but rather conforming to another opinion, he uses the phrase, “he must” (Twain, 718) five separate times. By repeating those two words, Twain shows how conformity is a requirement, not an option. Instead of reasoning out personal thoughts on a subject, people conform to the majority’s belief on that subject. People base opinions off on other people, which is Twain’s main point in his essay. Later on, he uses repetition once again to discuss the common changes in manners and man’s inability to think for themselves. Twain uses the pronoun “we” (719) to include everybody in his perspective on conformity. By ranging the settings, “…table manners, and company manners, and street manners…” (719), he shows how conformity impacts every aspect of life. Also, any...
People really do not have individual thoughts and just go along with the general opinions of others. Twain’s use of humor, rhetorical questions, everyday life examples, manners, literature, and outside influences present an effective argument for conformity. He believes that people like to imitate each other, so they can be accepted by the rest of society and agree with the public opinion. Without self-approval a person does not feel good about themselves and must always resign to be different. A person needs to conform to be a part of
“Social conformity has been practiced in societies around the world since ancient times,” and the reason it is so effective is that humans have an inherent need to be accepted as part of a group (Sadat). Furthermore, Hossna Sadat reports that:
According to Levitan and Verhulst, (2015), Conformity can be defined as a movement on the part of the discrepant person towards the group norm as a function of explicit or implicit social pressure from group members. (Levitan & Verhulst, 2015). This definition implies that conformity stems from the desire to be uniform, in order to gain popularity and therefore become closer to members of a certain group.
Human as a species who live in social groups, therefore, our behaviors are influenced by our society and other people in our social groups. Conformity is one of the social influence which sometimes can be good, but sometimes not. Conformity is thought to help society to prevent chaos. It helps group cohesiveness and to increase bonding with other people within your groups. However, when conformity comes in a severe condition, it can cause harm to people. People may lose their individuality and follow actions blindly without consideration of right or wrong. So why do people conform? This question has already been answered by many psychologists. In Asch’s classic conformity experiment, they found that
People conform because of two different social influences; normative social influence and informational social influence. In short, normative is when someone conforms because they want to be liked by the people around and to be appreciated. Informational social influence is when someone yields to the majority because they want to be right as they assume majority would have the right answer or they are right about something.