Humans crave attention, yet despise it. They work for success, but are content with mediocrity. Humans are complicated and often contradictory creatures; their wants and their needs can be at opposing ends of a spectrum, or be one in the same. They can want to blend in, but still desire to be special. To a human, their senses of individuality and conformity are both important, but to what extent? To have one is to sacrifice the other, in any shape or form. Over the course of this essay, the struggle between conforming and being an individual will be explored and explained, alongside with the price that must be paid to achieve individuality. For nothing in life ever comes without a price. Humans are social animals; they live, hunt and protect one another in groups. They build relationships, familial or otherwise and rely on one another for things they themselves cannot provide, such as comfort, shelter and food. Humans also have different opinions and views, which can lead to conflict. In order to avoid conflict, certain rules and expectations are put in place to ensure order and prevent anarchy. These rules and expectations lead to similar lifestyles and patterns of behaviours, inviting monotony and leading to people feeling as if they have lost their identity. And once they have felt as if they`ve lost their identity, they will try harder to regain or rediscover it. And in their pursuit of individuality, their relationships with their community may suffer. Conformity breeds the want of change, which leads to the pursuit of individuality, following up with separation from peers, bringing solitude, which creates a longing for companionship- even at the cost of conforming once again. The pursuit of individuality eventually leads ... ... middle of paper ... ... assaulted and abused by authority figures. Her attempt to distinguish herself only ended up causing her stress and trouble. The trouble Olive has encountered is made clear in one particular scene, where she is shown to be alone at a lunch table, surrounded by others talking and chattering. She is miserable, and this is emphasised repeatedly during the film. This is also shown with the numerous shots of her alone in her bedroom, and her looking to confess her ‘sins’ and failing to find someone who will listen. In conclusion, the textual examples provided and explanations of film techniques prove that conformity does breed the need to be an individual, and pursuit of this need leads to paying the price of sacrificing their community and relationships. Evil Genius and Easy A relate the message clearly; in order to be an individual, the price of community must be paid.
...ther, and nearly kills an innocent woman. In a broader perspective, conformity can leave people walking aimlessly down the beaten path with no real direction except conformity, doomed to live yet another meaningless life in a society based on archaic principles.
author Alexander Robbins states: “From the age of five children increasingly exclude peers who don’t conform to group norms. Children learn this quickly. A popular Indiana eighth grader told me ‘I have to be the same as everybody else, or people won’t like me anymore’” (150). The human brain is wired such that children will end friendships with kids that they find different. Robbins finds this behavior to be undesirable saying that it is not only unappealing, but it is a cop-out. In agreement with Robbins, parents across the world, organizations, and teen movies tell society that conformity is bad and that children should not conform to the group, rather they should stand alone and be individuals. However, Solomon Asch’s study may have discovered why this is. He concluded that: “The investigations described in this series are concerned with the independence and lack of independence in the face of group pressure” (1). Asch determines that in the face of pressure people are more apt to conform.
Identity is 'how you view yourself and your life.'; (p. 12 Knots in a String.) Your identity helps you determine where you think you fit in, in your life. It is 'a rich complexity of images, ideas and associations.';(p. 12 Knots in a String.) It is given that as we go through our lives and encounter different experiences our identity of yourselves and where we belong may change. As this happens we may gain or relinquish new values and from this identity and image our influenced. 'A bad self-image and low self-esteem may form part of identity?but often the cause is not a loss of identity itself so much as a loss of belonging.'; Social psychologists suggest that identity is closely related to our culture. Native people today have been faced with this challenge against their identity as they are increasingly faced with a non-native society. I will prove that the play The Rez Sisters showed this loss of identity and loss of belonging. When a native person leaves the reservation to go and start a new life in a city they are forced to adapt to a lifestyle they are not accustomed to. They do not feel as though they fit in or belong to any particular culture. They are faced with extreme racism and stereotypes from other people in the nonreservational society.
In society, people react to adversity differently. They may choose to overcome those difficulties or they are unable to adapt to those adversity can cause them to suffer from loss of identity.
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.
For many centuries there has been arguments between whether a society should be collective or individualistic. In an individualistic society, the idea is that the individual's life belongs to him and he has the right to pursue what he wishes. In a collective society, the individual's life belongs to the group and the individual must sacrifice the values they hold for the “greater good” of the group. The main question asked in this debate is whether an individual's life belongs to him or does it belong to the group. By working as individuals, a society is able to achieve more than a group and can enjoy more benefits and therefore should be individualistic.
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).
Some of the strengths of the social identity theory are that; throughout the years it has supported many empirical studies, it has also demonstrated the social categorization in intergroup behaviors, allowed us to differentiate between social and personal identities and has provide explanations for other areas of psychology (conformity). A weaknesses of the Social identity theory is that its application is restricted in the sense that it has very low ecological validity. Another weakness is that SIT favors situational factors rather than dispositional is not supported by evidence. The social Identity theory can be used to how to explain how we form our social and personal identities in the terms of in and out groups. SIT can also be used to explain why there is conflict between humans and different societies.
The inability to conform in society can lead to unhappiness and the feeling of inequality
The Conformist endures to effort to encounter his communally acknowledged aim while expending socially adequate methods, even if individual endeavors to enc...
tragedies that befell her. She is an example of a melancholic character that is not able to let go of her loss and therefore lets it t...
In today's world, society creates an impact on human life. More of an impact can be seen among family and peers. They can be found at home, work, and school. At home with family, identity can be created on the difference of having one parent, divorced or separated parents, no parents, abusive parents, or even negligent parents. For example, children who grow up without a father or mother figure tend to become more independent at an early stage. Another example is where certain experiences within the family such as constantly witnessing parents argue can cause one's identity to be confined and distant. But, some people shape their identity similar to their parents. Such as a son became a soldier in the army because his father was in the army. Siblings, if any, are also an influence on the social identity of a person. They either become your friend, mentor, or you...
Humanity is defined by one major factor: one’s understating of the self. By understanding one’s self, one can understand society and the world that surrounds themselves. There is one thing that can often distort one’s personality, one’s identity. By identifying as one thing a person can often change how they act or do certain things. This is often found to hide one’s true motives or intention, but it can also be used to hide hidden factors that aren’t as prevalent. One’s personality and identity are very closely linked, and tend to play off one another. This fact can be show in within multiple works. To name a few authors who demonstrate this fact: Clifford Geertz, Horace Miner, and Andrei Toom. Their works seek to dive deeper
All in all, individuality and conformity plays a major role in society and it is up to the people to balance these two factors to maintain order. A society without a balance of these factors will only be disastrous in which it will cause individuals to think selfishly and groups to dictate over individuals. Maintaining the balance between individuality and conformity will be the key to maintaining order in society.
In today's society, with the advent of modern digital communication and an increased focus upon global society and diversity, humans have a golden opportunity to evaluate themselves and how they identify both individually and in their broader culture. Although the question of “who am I” is perhaps one of the classical questions of the human cognizance of identity, our identity as both groups and individuals is directly related to the culture we are a part of, especially in regards to whether that culture is determined to be individualistic or collectivist. These differing mindsets have an inherent connection to the way that we view ourselves and the impact of interactions between different cultures.