Inquiry Rough Draft

Teacher's Comments (Link)
“He who marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice”. Humans are complex organisms, most notably for our abilities of critical thought and use of dynamic language. In the midst of human complexities lies a need to belong. Since we have come into existence, humans have clung to each other, finding strength in numbers against the environment. Over time, humans have applied this strategy to social situations, resulting in conformity. We change our behavior in order to cohere to certain groups, listening to certain music, wearing certain clothes, and professing various ideologies. There are divergent theories that aim to answer why humans conform socially. Some trace the behavior to our need of cooperation for survival, while some claim that we have an emotional or egotistical need to belong to a group. Nonetheless, conformity is abundant, and it affects every one of us. Chances are, every human on Earth conforms in some way, shape, or form, at least on the most miniscule of levels. The only testable and observable aspect of conformity is the outward change in behavior; a person may argue for republicans in front of his conservative grandmother, while claiming agreement with democrats in front of his friends; in his subconscious, does that person agree with republican or democrat ideology? What cannot be observed are the internal beliefs of individuals who conform. There is no empirical way to determine whether people change at the core in order to blend in or if people simply change their actions to be acceptable. Although it cannot be proven with current technology, it is more reasonable to assume that people cannot be changed all the way through by social pressure, and that humans simply modify their behavior to avoid the hammers of society.

            In social psychology, conformity is defined as “behavior in accordance with socially accepted conventions or standards”, and can my put simply as “yielding to group pressure”. There are three types of conformity currently accepted in social psychology, and they are compliance, internalization, and identification. Compliance is changing one’s actions to satisfy social norms, while disagreeing consciously. Internalization is the idea that a person can change behavior and change internal beliefs in the process. Identification is adhering to the accepted attributes of a social role; having the role of power has been shown to make people belittle the people around them. Man later described conformity in three categories: normative conformity, informational conformity, and ingratiational conformity. Normative conformity is when a person changes his actions in order to fit into a group. The change is fueled by a fear of rejection, and is comparable to compliance, in which the person affected harbors discord in his subconscious. Informational conformity occurs when a person uses the general opinion of a group to make a decision he is uncertain about, using the group’s ideology as a compass. Informational conformity can be said to lead to internalization, because the person in question takes the group’s opinion and makes it his own. Ingratiational conformity is when an individual alters his actions in order to get ahead by means of social networking or favors. This is fueled by the need for something, rather than the need to actually belong to the group. It can be said, then, that ingratiational conformity is also a form of compliance, since people who succumb to it do not falter in their beliefs.