Living in The Minds Of Others Without Knowing It and On the Primacy of Embarrassment in Social Life

Growing up as a little kid nothing mattered. You could wear and express yourself any way you wanted and wouldn’t be judged. It was great. But as you begin to grow up everything changes and things begin to matter, and everyone around you starts to affect your decisions; how you dress, do your hair, and how you act. In articles Living in The Minds Of Others Without Knowing It and On the Primacy of Embarrassment in Social Life they examine different ways of social pressure and their effects. Conformity and social pressure affect the way people act or the way they express their self-due to the fear of not fitting in.

Conformity and social pressure has always been around. For thousands of years people have been trying to fit in and be like everyone else. Many people would disagree with this statement but it’s true. Over thousands of years ago there was conformity and social pressures, an example of this would have to do with religion; religion is old itself and causes people to do things out of the kindness of their heart or because they were taught “it’s the right thing to do”. Mark R. Leary1 in the department of psychology at Wake Forest gets into detail with this when he writes “Judeo-Christian, tradition that has dominated American religion exhorts its followers to show little concern for worldly matters of all kinds and to disregard social convention in favor of moral law”. He examines that religion too can be a big contributor to social pressures. Religion tells people to ignore social interactions that aren’t of the same morals to the church; which is giving pressures to people and those true to the church will follow what they say. For example, sin is something looked down upon so those true to the church won’t sin so in essenc...

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... “uncool” causing them to be judged. Another problem is insecure attachment. Meaning they will never want to do something on their own. They will always need the support from someone either if it's in person or through a tiny screen, they won't do anything without first asking if its socially accepted.

Even with the problems conformity and social pressure have it's still present in our everyday lives and people only do it to “fit in”. In the articles Mark R. Leary and Rowland S. Miller wrote they really go into the details of the doing of conformity and the effects caused by trying to fit in and be connected with society. Most people don't even realize the ways they are affected but everyone is. Whether its the way we dress, talk, or even do your hair; it's all around us. And oh how we would all like to go back to you childhood days where none of that even mattered.