Though conformity is a humane feeling, many examples of conformity going wrong can be found throughout history. For example, multiple Germans conformed to follow Nazism and prosecuted millions of innocent Jews. Southern whites conformed to segregate thousands of African-Americans. By looking at multiple sources of literature, one can see conformity becomes unacceptable when innocent people are hurt and/or killed and affects the way one thinks or acts.
An example of intolerable conformity can be found in The Giver by Lois Lowry. In The Giver, Jonas is a citizen of the Community, a strictly ruled utopian society. The citizens of the Community know that “for a contributing citizen to be released from the community was a final decision, a terrible punishment, and overwhelming statement of failure.” “Well-aged” people and babies “labeled Inadequate” are released from the Community, too. At first, releasing merely seems like seems like leaving the Community. However, Jonas realizes that “He killed it! My father killed it!” after Jonas witnesses his father perform a release on an identical twin and that “release” is actually an act of execution/euthanasia/mercy-killing with a lethal injection. The Giver, Jonas’ mentor, explains that Jonas’ father and other release-performing people are not to blame; “It’s the way they live. It’s the life that was created for them… It’s what [they] were told to do, and [they] know nothing else.” This shows that people in the Community are killing innocent people mindlessly, because of the absence of humane feelings. In addition, no one really seems to have any true freedom in the Community. In this example, conformity becomes unacceptable when it contradicts with humane, moral practices.
In “The Pedestria...
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... of no rebellion. Thus, it is necessary to rebel against conformity when others are controlling your direct thoughts.
Hence, conformity is only acceptable when others are not hurt and their thoughts are their own. In The Giver, conformity cannot be tolerated, because innocent babies and seniors are being killed for the sake for their society. In “The Pedestrian”, conformity has gone wrong due to the fact “different” people, like Leonard Mead, are being punished for their uniqueness. Prisoners are currently conforming to an unacceptable degree in North Korea, believing their horrible dictators are gods, instead of the causes of their misery. This matters because as seen in the article “Life in a Labor Camp”, overboard conformity is currently harming others. Thus, humans must learn to stop conforming when conformity alters one’s thoughts and actions and/or harms them.
Conformity; to comply with the rules, standards or laws. Ray Bradbury uses conformity in Fahrenheit 451, Roald Dahl uses it in “Lamb to the Slaughter” as well. In Stephen Vincent Benet “By the Waters of Babylon” they use conformity, and in “Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin. The similarities of theme in Fahrenheit 451 and “Lamb to the Slaughter” are noticeable and deserve complete study. Most obvious comparisons are Mildred and Mary, having to face choices about conforming, Montag and John are both non conformers, Captain Beatty and Captain John Barton are both conformers. Comparing these two stories shows that conformity can affect a character's judgment as well as actions.
President John F. Kennedy once said, "Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.". Conforming to societal customs can lead to “pluralistic ignorance” which is defined as being unsure and doubtful of majority behavior. This diagnoses causes people to conform to things that are not actually in existence and undermines creativity and productiveness. Hans Christian Andersen’s “Emperors New Clothes” is the impeccable illustration of the consequences and compliancy of conformity. No one in the story wanted to admit that they could not see the cloth and were unfit for their position, therefore everyone only admitted to seeing the incredible cloth. Conformity is divided between internal and external. Internal is the honest changing how one believes and acts and external is when one only behaves in a different way but does not change what they believe. External conformity is the most detrimental to the individual due to the constant combat between self-morals and actions. Conformity not only is destructive to an individual but also is harmful to others. Studies have proven that conforming can cause people to become passive bystanders to ethical wrongs like bullying and breaking of the law. With overwhelming and constant refutation, the negatives of conformity tend to suppress the
Jonas's father did not understand the value of life really was. The Community makes sure that their residents do not know the true meaning of release. Just because they ignore the fact that several murders happen frequently, does not mean that the reality behind it disappears with it. Ignoring this, does not make the residents of the Community live a blissful life. In the beginning of the novel, when the Jonas talks about what release means, he says, “… to be released… a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure,”(Lowry 20).
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
We live in a society where each individual has their own set of thoughts and beliefs. Occasionally one will modify their beliefs and behavior to coincide with a group. This is an example of social influence. Social influence has three main components; conformity, compliance and obedience. The concept of compliance is similar to conformity, however there is a slight difference. Compliance only requires a person to perform a task. The person does not have to agree or disagree with the assignment, just simply complete it. Conformity requires the person being influenced to change their attitudes and or beliefs. An example of this aspect of social psychology is the holocaust in World War II. Adolph Eichmann was a Nazi officer responsible for filling up death camps in Germany. After the war he went on trial in Jerusalem for crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. On May 31, 1962, he was sentenced to death for the horrible crimes he committed. His defense was "Why me? Why not the local policemen, thousands of them? They would have been shot if they had refused to round up the Jews for the death camps. Why not hang them for not wanting to be shot? Why me? Everybody killed the Jews". A few months after the start of Eichmann’s trial, Stanley Milgram instituted an experiment testing ones obedience to authority. He wanted to find out if good people could do atrocious things if they were just obeying authority. Was Eichmann and millions of others in Nazi Germany decent people who were just following orders? Some other famous experiments that have taken place to test the waters of social psychology are Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment and Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments, all ...
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
Many people have heard the old phrase “if one jumped off a cliff, would you follow them?” that concerns conforming into society and following other people’s actions. In “Stargazer”, by Dara Weir, being a conformist is seen to be a negative way of life for one to pursue. Upon initially reading “Stargazer”, I was overwhelmed with the depth of the poem. I had a strong sense of the poem being about society, but I had it had taken a few readings to get a stronger background of the meaning. After doing so, I felt more positive emotions throughout the poem, as it thoroughly describes opportunity that an individual is given throughout their life. With this, though, conformity can be a factor that may affect the opportunities one receives. Although
It is very common to see conformity among young people, especially when large groups of young people are constantly around each other. School is one example where conformity is rampant. For some reason people tend to gravitate towards what others are doing. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go, the characters are no different from any other young person in that they tend to conform. Ishiguro shows this conformity to prove that conformity stems from the want to fit in and pure ignorance. At Hailsham, the students conform just to fit in with the rest of the students, but they also conform because they do not know any better.
Everybody wants to be accepted, yet society is not so forgiving. It bends you and changes you until you are like everyone else. Society depends on conformity and it forces it upon people. In Emerson's Self Reliance, he says "Society is a joint stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. " People are willing to sacrifice their own hopes and freedoms just to get the bread to survive.
“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:
...at person’s belief but is carried out to achieve rewards or to avoid punishment (Winner 2011:287). Conformity is behaviour that blends with the behaviour of the majority of the group needed to function effectively in a large group (Winner 2011:290). Conditioning the members of a cult is an effective way to change attitudes of the members to ones that are approved by the cult’s social standards and ideas.
The word Majority influence is used to help described conformity because people often conform to please others, not their selves. Non conformity on the other hand is when one refuses to conform. People usually conform when they believe what others are doing is more correct or they want to fit in. A scene that shows conformity is when the prisoners are outside working in the field. They are all participating in the same activity, eating the same things as well as having to be in bed by a certain time and be up before light. This is called conformity to group norms because the prisoners are followed the structured ways of prison life. Many of the prisoners also follow the rules because everyone else is, if a few prisoners started to stop and go against authority others would surely follow if they felt that it is the best option for themselves. This is how our society tends to work. Luke shows non- conformity through attempting to break out of the prison three times. Whenever he got away he would pull tricks on them. This shows that he refuses to conform to any of the rule that have been made and is willing to break them even if there are consequences. Each time he was caught he was faced with worse and worse consequences. To him escaping to live his own life, how he wants, is worth it even if it ends in death which viewers watching Cool Hand Luke sadly
Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and neglected their conscience reflecting how this can be destructive in experiences of real life. On the contrary, Diana Baumrind pointed out in her article ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that the experiments were not valid hence useless.
Although believed to be only negative, conflicts based on conformity can have positive results. Problems derived from conformity may cause controversy in society but for some people who conformed, they’ll know that it’s not always going to be a negative result. However, conforming can lead to positives too such as happiness or learning something new.
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...