Conformity is a type of social influence that adjusts one's behavior, attitudes or beliefs in order to match those of other people or a group standard. There are lots of reasons to why people conform, it could be because of one’s desire or need to fit in or be accepted by others and maintaining order in ones life. In this essay, I am going to discuss about the three main factors that influence conformity; culture, unanimity and minority influence.
Culture can be defined as the distinct ways that people who live in different parts of the world or areas, or belonging to different social groups, classify the world, represent their experiences, the norms, values and behavior that they have. Culture can consist of many dimensions, which are certain patterns of how a particular culture tends to view the world.
One of the many dimensions that may have an influence on conformity is individualism-collectivism. This dimension basically describes how people in the culture define themselves as a collective and their relationships with others. In collectivist countries (culture), such as Hong Kong, Fiji, and Brazil, people tend to be more cohesive and the group’s interest is more important than individual needs. In individualist countries (culture), such as United Kingdom and France, on the other hand, self-interest is more important than group interest and family ties are loose. Traditionally, African, South American and Asian countries are considered to be collectivist cultures, while North American and European countries are considered to be individualistic cultures. Economy of the world and countries could be the reason why the difference in the collectivism-individualism dimension has developed. Plenty of cooperation is needed in cou...
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...re inconsistent, and their claims seemed too rigid or unrealistic. I personally believe that further research should take place in order to investigate the long lasting effects of minority influence in addition to the other parts of Moscovici’s theory.
In conclusion, culture, unanimity and minority influence are three important factors that influence conformity. These three factors look at three different aspects of conformity. Culture looks at collectivism and individualism dimensions of each country, while unanimity and minority influence look at various countries in one perspectives (just a group of people). Also, while unanimity is when people follow the majority due to peer pressure, minority influence is when majority group follows the minority group, as the smaller group is more consistent, non-cohesive, non-unanimous and calm with their opinions and views.
How does one define what culture is? Culture is defined as the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with, their world and with one another - transmitted from generation through learning. This is particularly meaning a pattern of behavior shared by a society or group of people; with many things making up a society’s ‘way of life’ such as language, foods etc. Culture is something that molds people into who they are today. It influences how people handle a variety of situations, process information and how they interact with others. However, there are events when one’s own culture does not play a significant role in the decisions that they make or how they see the world. Despite
A culture’s tendency to be individualistic or collectivistic can be found at the root of
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
Conformity, or going along with the crowd, is a unique phenomenon that manifests itself in our thoughts and behaviors. It’s quite simple to identify countless examples of the power of conformity in virtually all aspects of social life. Conformity influences our opinions and relationships with others, often to a higher extent than we realize. It is posited that people generally conform to the group in order to fit in and avoid rejection or because they truly believe the group is more knowledgeable than they are. After analyzing numerous studies and experiments on the nature of conformity, one will find that the motive of social acceptance is the greatest driver of conformity.
Culture by definition is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices, as well as customary beliefs, social forms and material traits that characterize a racial, religious or ...
Conformity is defined as the occurrence of people yielding to social pressures as a result of pressure from a group of their peers; when faced by the pressure to conform, people will alter their behaviour and actions to fit the norm demonstrated by their peers (Lilienfield et al., 2012). Conformity is studied so that is can be understood and used in society to facilitate positive outcomes, and help avoid situations where peoples’ predisposition to conform leads to negative consequences (Lilienfield et al., 2012). By understanding conformity and other social processes society as a whole is able to understand themselves better and motivates them to work on improving as a whole (Lilienfield et al., 2012).
Culture is the unique way to act and think within a people from a certain place. It’s the way the people hold their beliefs, what they hold valuable, how they speak and even how they write. Culture is how people relate and act with one another within a certain space. Culture can vary from place to place such as city, state, country or continent.
“Individualistic cultures, in the western-hemisphere, [such as the United States,] emphasize… personal identity and self-determination. Conformity is far less pervasive in individualistic societies because democratic choices and laissez-faire viewpoints are somewhat considered.”
Conformity, compliance and obedience are behavioural consequences of social influence (real or imagined social pressure) that occur in the presence of a group or other individuals (Elsenbroich & Xenitidou, 2012). Often these concepts are misinterpreted as being the same or even synonymous and while they do have similarities they are also very dissimilar. In social psychology conformity, compliance and obedience are distinct concepts that coincide due to their effect on behaviour in the presence of others. Pascual, Line Felonneau, Guéguen & Lafaille (2013) define conformity as an altering of behaviour and beliefs in an individual in order to reflect the behaviour and beliefs of the group that holds influence, though Myers (2014) emphasises that
Another influence that allow people to conform and fall under the pressure are when people are in the group. People tend to conform more when they are in groups compared to when they are more by themselves. How many people does it take for people to feel like they need to conform? Based on the data that was found in most people conform in bigger group because it goes along with peer pressure and just wanting to fit in (Levitan and Verhulst, 2016). Also, another reason is that people don’t like the feeling of being wrong.
Elliot Aronson (2012) provides a definition of conformity, two social psychological processes that underlie a conformity and cited examples of reasons why people conform in the book, The Social Animal. Aronson (2012) defines a conformity as “a change in a person’s behavior or opinion as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people” (p.19). In accordance with Aronson’s (2012) definition of conformity, people do conform owing to the social influence, which are two main social psychological processes: belonging and getting information.
Although the subject of conformity has been dwindled down to the simplistic definition of compliance, psychologically, it consist of three different classifications, normative, informational, and integrational. Fundamentally, the normative category refers to the “yielding to
Culture has a variety of meanings in our daily lives. Culture is defined as objects created by a society as well as the ways of thinking, acting, and behaving in a society (Macionis). Culture has a variety of elements that is important in understand. To grasp culture, we must consider both thoughts and things. Culture shapes not only what we do, but also what we think and how we feel.
Conformity is defined as 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. Normative conformity is motivated by 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 are smoking,
What is culture? Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving