The Importance Of Conformity In Modern Society

In the analysis of society in today's times, the motives of social change, control, and conformity provides the basis of how society controls human behavior. The ideals and expectations place onto people in modern society are established through means of control where people are expected to behave within a spectrum of normality and what society deems as acceptable behavior. Forms of social influence as simple as peer pressure and wanting to fit in transform into major controls of society like laws, law enforcement officers and the government as a whole. The way that people make sense of their environment is through formed first impressions, interpretations of other people's behavior and how that behavior affects their attitudes, stereotypes, and perceptions of other types of people. The overall impact of these ideas on individuals shows how conformity, persuasion, stereotypes, and culture affect how society maintains and changes social norms.
The first of these ideals is conformity. “Conformity is the aligning one's attitude, opinion or behavior to those of other people (McLeod,

The main reason for this social control is to change, influence and innovate new group norms instead of maintaining the same old ones. This is often displayed in politics when politicians promise to change previous legislation to a more favorable and widely accepted policy to gain the approval of the highest number of voters. This is also how social change takes place in regard to gaining more religious, economic or other personal freedoms. In societies like the United States, these types of social controls are expressed in societies known as collectivist cultures. A collectivist culture is a system where policies and social expectations are “dependent on the majority influence (SAGE, 2006)” and change of these expectations happen over time and are based on what the majority does and does not approve