March 26, 2008
Imagine you’ve just transferred to a new college because your family relocated. You’re naturally a sociable person, hence, it didn’t take you long to blend in smoothly with your new course mates. As you spend more time hanging out with a particular group, you started to eat like them, speak like them, dress like them and act like them. Unknowingly, you’ve conformed to their way of life.
One of the ways you’ve conformed to this new group, which you haven’t been feeling very comfortable with, is their social interaction. It appears that this clique you’re in is the bench marker of the course: whoever (lecturers, tutors, fellow course mates or even strangers) they appraise positively would be accepted, whoever they appraise negatively would be ostracised.
This is causing you some distress because you’re beginning to be dumbfounded by their persistence in ostracising some people – including nice people who assisted you in adjusting to the new setting initially and others that you haven’t really had any unpleasant encounters with. No one openly discusses this issue either, but everyone seems willing to participate in the ostracising act.
Out of confusion, you started asking yourself, “Why am I so cold and unaffectionate towards some people? Why do I exclude them from my social circle?”
One of the primary reasons for participation in this act of ostracism is caused by conformity – any form of behavioural change influenced by another person or group. However, the behavioural change is not accompanied by attitudinal or perceptual changes; this probably caused the perplexity reported.
Two principal forces – informational influence and normative influence - motivate conformity. Informational influence happens when people are persuaded by others due to the desire to be correct and obtain valid information. Normative influence happens when people are swayed to behave in a certain by others in order to gain rewards or avoid punishment. They may not necessarily agree with the judgements of others, however, they are keen to be accepted or avoid exclusion. It appears that normative influence plays the dominant role in this scenario.
Normative influence reflects the social motivation of people to conform. Humans are by nature social beings, hence, there is a deep desire within every person to form connections with people; this involves gaining acceptance in a group, forming favourable impressions and building relations with others. To successfully establish rapport, a person has to be well liked and approved by the target audience. Therefore, it is highly likely that a person participates freely in ostracism if it ensures that they’re included, not excluded, since their behaviour is in agreement with the group norm. Indeed, it is usually undesirable to disagree with popular opinions or social norms – it makes the person salient and brings forth scrutiny and mostly negative appraisal. Thus, this creates the pressure to conform in behaviour even when the person holds beliefs contrary to what is performed (as per the scenario), or when the behaviour itself seems erroneous.
This, though, can lead to further devastation if informational influence starts to affect a person’s appraisal of the ostracising act. Informational influence occurs when people trust others’ judgements, because they appear to be more knowledgeable, to be useful in a specific event. Hence, if ostracism comes to be viewed as an acceptable social norm, it would actually lead many to perform baseless exclusion and ridicule.
A further damaging effect of blind conformity is attitudinal change. Caused, in part, by the cognitive dissonance between attitude and behaviour, the person might be inclined to realign his or her values and beliefs to match the behaviour. This can result in adverse consequences as ostracism, an unethical act by nature, becomes justified. Not only is the person’s morality negatively affected, this form of mental reasoning can lead to unwanted consequences if they are applied in situations relating to aggression, violence and abuse.
Thus, we ought to be discerning and not be easily swayed by established social norms, especially when they are perverse. Therefore, since we’re aware of the powerful social influences imposed on us, let us not conform to the patterns of this world any longer, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds, by what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy, that we may act according to that which is good and acceptable.
Eric Matthew wrote @ 10:31 AM