On the other hand, nonconformity and dissent do occur in most cultures, and the societies respond to them in various ways. Individuals who form dissenting views face rejection in their society at first. They are enemies to their societies for they threaten the highly regarded and practiced values. For instance, the first campaigners of gay and lesbian rights faced rejection from the society and even to date; they still face the same problem in societies that have not embraced such sexual inclinations.
Cultural conformity cannot be over emphasized; the security, stability, and cohesion that it brings about in a group or society underscore its value. Nonconformist behavior, even though a boon for art, does pose a threat to the greatly regarded values that a society holds. The society is therefore justified in meting out punishment and ostracizing those who do not conform to the norms.
Culture And Conformity An Essay
This is IvyPanda's free database of academic paper samples. It contains thousands of paper examples on a wide variety of topics, all donated by helpful students. You can use them for inspiration, an insight into a particular topic, a handy source of reference, or even just as a template of a certain type of paper. The database is updated daily, so anyone can easily find a relevant essay example.
Another significant difference between cultures that can impact levels of conformity is how industrialized and modernized they are, and studying how this has affected levels of conformity among the people of that country. In 1984, Kagitcibasi did just that.
Students looking for free, top-notch essay and term paper samples on various topics. Additional materials, such as the best quotations, synonyms and word definitions to make your writing easier are also offered here.
So they decided to conduct a meta-analysis of all the studies from different countries that they could find. They compared only studies that used the Asch experimental paradigm (the line tests). They focused on individualistic and collectivist cultures.
The results of the meta-analysis showed that collectivist cultures had a significantly higher rate of conformity than cultures classified as individualistic. For instance, countries like Japan, Hong Kong and Fiji had higher rates of conformity than France, the UK and the USA.
Although we have focused to this point on the situational determinants of conformity, such as the number of people in the majority and their unanimity, we have not yet considered the question of which people are likely to conform and which people are not. In this section, we will consider how personality variables, gender, and culture influence conformity.
Several reviews and meta-analyses of the existing research on conformity and leadership in men and women have now been conducted, and so it is possible to draw some strong conclusions in this regard. In terms of conformity, the overall conclusion from these studies is that that there are only small differences between men and women in the amount of conformity they exhibit, and these differences are influenced as much by the social situation in which the conformity occurs as by gender differences themselves.
On average, men and women have different levels of self-concern and other-concern. Men are, on average, more concerned about appearing to have high status and may be able to demonstrate this status by acting independently from the opinions of others. On the other hand, and again although there are substantial individual differences among them, women are, on average, more concerned with connecting to others and maintaining group harmony. Taken together, this means that, at least when they are being observed by others, men are likely to hold their ground, act independently, and refuse to conform, whereas women are more likely to conform to the opinions of others in order to prevent social disagreement. These differences are less apparent when the conformity occurs in private (Eagly, 1978, 1983).
In addition to the public versus private nature of the situation, the topic being discussed also is important, with both men and women being less likely to conform on topics that they know a lot about, in comparison with topics on which they feel less knowledgeable (Eagly & Chravala, 1986). When the topic is sports, women tend to conform to men, whereas the opposite is true when the topic is fashion. Thus it appears that the small observed differences between men and women in conformity are due, at least in part, to informational influence.
Because men have higher status in most societies, they are more likely to be perceived as effective leaders (Eagly, Makhijani, & Klonsky, 1992; Rojahn & Willemsen, 1994; Shackelford, Wood, & Worchel, 1996). And men are more likely to be leaders in most cultures. For instance, women hold only about 20% of the key elected and appointed political positions in the world (World Economic Forum, 2013). There are also more men than women in leadership roles, particularly in high-level administrative positions, in many different types of businesses and other organizations. Women are not promoted to positions of leadership as fast as men are in real working groups, even when actual performance is taken into consideration (Geis, Boston, & Hoffman, 1985; Heilman, Block, & Martell, 1995).
In summary, although the effects of individual differences on conformity tend to be smaller than those of the social context, they do matter. And gender and cultural differences can also be important. Conformity, like most other social psychological processes, represents an interaction between the situation and the person.
One methodological concern was that if we used an adult model, as most other studies have done, then children might only conform out of a deference to adult authority, not out of a genuine respect for conventionality. To address this concern, we used models of two ages. For some children, the informant who expressed norms and preferences was an adult, whereas for other children, the informant was a 6-year-old child. By using these two models, we could test whether our hypothesized effect (greater conformity to norms than to preferences) would hold even when children did not perceive the model as having authority.
Humans inherit from their forebears not only their genes but also their cultural practices. For this process of cultural inheritance to work, younger generations must be motivated to acquire culture from older generations. Previous studies have suggested that young children are motivated to act conventionally, but these studies were limited in that they did not rule out plausible alternative explanations for why children may seek to act in conventional ways (e.g., perhaps children only perform conventional actions because they seek to affiliate with others or achieve instrumental goals). By using a task setting that accounted for these alternative explanations, we provided further evidence that young children do have a specific motivation to act conventionally.
Finally, a fifth limitation was that our sample consisted of relatively affluent children in a Western context, so our conclusions warrant further study from broader cultural contexts. Notably, previous research found that framing a necklace making activity as conventional rather than instrumental increased imitative fidelity not only for Western children from the United States but also for non-Western children from Melanesia, suggesting universal processes [1]. In addition to assessing how non-Western children interpret and respond to linguistic cues of conventionality, future research may also address more targeted questions regarding, for instance, the magnitudes of such effects in different cultures or the age at which children from different cultures begin to prioritize conventionality. Given that human uniqueness is based in large part on the human capacity for culture, further research on how young children from different cultures acquire their various cultural competencies will go a long way towards answering the timeless question of how human psychology became unique.
3. The States Parties to the present Covenant, including those having responsibility for the administration of Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories, shall promote the realization of the right of self-determination, and shall respect that right, in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.
The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize that, in the enjoyment of those rights provided by the State in conformity with the present Covenant, the State may subject such rights only to such limitations as are determined by law only in so far as this may be compatible with the nature of these rights and solely for the purpose of promoting the general welfare in a democratic society.
3. The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to choose for their children schools, other than those established by the public authorities, which conform to such minimum educational standards as may be laid down or approved by the State and to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.
1. The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to submit in conformity with this part of the Covenant reports on the measures which they have adopted and the progress made in achieving the observance of the rights recognized herein.
Everyday observation confirms that we often adopt the actions and attitudes of the people around us. Trends in clothing, music, foods, and entertainment are obvious. But our views on political issues, religious questions, and lifestyles also reflect to some degree the attitudes of the people we interact with. Similarly, decisions about behaviors such as smoking and drinking are influenced by whether the people we spend time with engage in these activities. Psychologists refer to this widespread tendency to act and think like the people around us as conformity. 2ff7e9595c
Comments