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How do nice people get corrupted? Throughout the path of life, everyone may come across this concept, experience or wonder this same question. Although every situation is unique, ordinary people, simply just doing their jobs can be a victim in a fraud or liaison in an egregious operation. In order to understand this social influence, the negative consequences starts from the analysis of what is the basis of conformity and obedience in the power of the situation.
Conformity is defined as a change in behavior or belief to accord with others. (Meyers 170) What other people do and say can gradually influence others to deviate from ones beliefs and conform to others. One of the most famous documented studies to better illustrate this was a procedure performed by social psychologist, Solomon Asch.
Asch’s Conformity Procedure was where participants were presented with a set of lines. In one case a single line and the other a trio of lines. The participant’s task was simply to find which line in the trio of lines matches the single line in length. When looking at the lines, there is only one line of the trio lines that obviously matches the single line. What Asch did was put participants in groups of collaborators, the actors, to turn in a specific answer. He did this so that the collaborators would give their answers first and then the participant who thinks he’s just one of the participants like the rest gives their answer. What concluded through this experimented was that if you have collaborators systematically giving the wrong answer, then majority of the people will give the wrong answer. (Meyers 158) The peer pressures created by a large group are such that the individual comes to decision radically different from the decision ...
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...rmines how he will act." — Stanley Milgram (Levine)
Milgram explained his results through all his experiments as the power of situation. We as a society are inclined toward obedience of what we take to be authority.
Conformity, obedience and the power of situation are a few of the many reasons why nice people get corrupted. Society influences us to define what is right and what is wrong. Society also defines what is correct behavior. There is an ethical implication on how we should act in a workplace. On one hand, they must be respectful of authority. On the other hand there must be a point in which the demands of such authority must be opposed and resisted.
Works Cited
Meyers, David. Exploring Social Psychology. 6th . New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. 170.
Print
Levine, Robert. "Milgram's Progress." American Scientist. N.p., July 2004. Web. 7 Feb 2004.
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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
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In 1951, Solomon Asch carried out several experiments on conformity. The aim of these studies was to investigate conformity in a group environment situation. The purpose of these experiments was to see if an individual would be swayed by public pressure to go along with the incorrect answer. Asch believed that conformity reflects on relatively rational process in which people are pressured to change their behaviour. Asch designed experiments to measure the pressure of a group situation upon an individual judgment. Asch wanted to prove that conformity can really play a big role in disbelieving our own senses.
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Definition: Conformity is behavior and appearances that follow and maintain the standards of a group; also the acceptance of cultural goals and the pursuit of those goals through means defined as legitimate.
The most basic concept in social psychology is conformity. Conformity is the idea that behaviour or a belief is changed in order to follow, or conform, to what is considered the “norm.” One of the oldest experiments to support this notion was conducted in 1935 by Muzafer Sherif (Song, Ma, Wu, Li, 2012 p. 1366). There are two different types of
Perhaps the compliancy factor did not convince me to buy a car that day, because I didn’t feel obligated to buy the car; the car sales men were very rude and were clearly trying to take advantage of me. According to Cialdini, Cacioppo, Bassett, and Miller research shows that the these compliance strategies are a great tool for increasing profitable sales and for influencing our social behaviors, because people instinctively feel a sense of commitment and obligation to the products and the people they like (1978). For instance, when we ask a friend for a favor, we feel the need to reciprocate, because people want to be helpful. There is also a great importance of social compliancy in groups and to authority. All these social influences have an impact on how we respond to others requests, having an important impact on our behavior. (Meyer,
Conformity involves the changing of one’s attitudes, opinions, or behaviours to match those of the ‘norms’. The “norms”, established by society, are what we should or ought to be thinking, feeling, or doing if we wish to be accepted into a group. This desire to be accepted and belong to a group is an undeniable human need.
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
Pascal says “man had never been more than a corrupted being” (Pascal) implying that although people are aware of morals and of the certain things that should not be done, many still remain to be naturally selfish and desire only to please themselves. They tend to ignore their selfish natures either by being indifferent about their actions or by distracting themselves with other things such as work, personal goals, pleasure, etc. The main reason for corruption is the pride mankind has, claims
To come to understand why people act with deviant behavior, we must comprehend how society brings about the acceptance of basic norms. The “techniques and strategies for preventing deviant human behavior in a society” are called social control (Schaefer, 2009). As we respect and acknowledge these social norms we expect others to do so as well. Therefore, according to our behavior sanctions are carried out whether they are positive or negative. Conformity, which refers to “going along with peers, people of our own status who have no special right to direct our behavior” (Schaefer, 2009), is one way social control occurs in a group level which influence the way we act. On the other hand, obedience is the compliance with a higher authority, resulting in social control at a societal level. The sanctions used to promote these factors can be informal and formal social control. Informal social control can be very casual in enforcing social norms by using body language or other forms of discipline, however formal social control is carried out by authorized agents when desired behavior is not obtained by informal sancti...
This manifests in a leaders tendency to overrate themselves and their work. People typically view themselves on a higher level than their peers, which can have them overlooking their own short comings. Also, people are more inclined to take credit for success and blame external factors for failures. Lastly, there are conflicts of interest. Hughes et al. (2014) cite that “we may be conscious of potential conflicts of interest, but even then, though, we misjudge our own ability to discount the extent to which the conflict actually biases our perception of the situation in our own favor” (p. 149). All of these are biases impact moral reasoning. When leaders allow these biases to impact their behavior and decision making, it results in an unhealthy organizational culture and unethical climate. Conversely, when leaders fully understand these biases and continually work towards improving their moral reasoning, they can positively affect organizational culture and create an ethical climate, which ultimately influencing all organizational
There are many social influences which have an effect or lasting effect on the behavior of an individual. Within many group scenarios, conformity and obedience play a large role in how people tend to think and behave, especially if they get carried away. Obedience refers to compliance to an authority figure or with others in a group. On the other hand, conformity refers to an individual changing their thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors to accommodate with the standards of a group or their peers. Both of which are pure examples of how human behavior changes based on certain social situations. Obedience and conformity both occur during situations of social facilitation, social loafing, and groupthink.
The corruption in hospitals, where “doctors can keep their government salary and work in private hospitals”, sees people like Balram’s father die of horrible deaths every day. Dismayed by the lack of respect of the government for its dying citizens, Balram is corrupted by the fact that in the “darkness”, there is no service, not even in death. Balram also claims that “the schoolteacher had stolen our lunch money”, which was for a government funded lunch program. However, Balram doesn’t blame him, which justifies that Balram, from such a young age gives into the idea of corruption saying that “...you can’t expect a man in a dung heap to smell sweet”. In addition to his father and the school teacher, Balram is corrupted by his childhood hero Vijay. Growing up, Balram idolises Vijay for having escaped “the darkness”. However what he is ignorant of is that even though Vijay is in “the light” he is still corrupted by “the darkness”. Balram explains that “Vijay and a policemen beat another men to death”, yet he doesn’t see it as a problem, because he understand that one cannot become successful in such a corrupt system without becoming as corrupt as the system itself. It is here that Adiga asks the question of how are impoverished Indians are expected to refuse to engage in corruption when they live in such poor conditions. Thus, the reader is able to sympathize with Balram’s corruption,