Los Angeles City College Conformity Discussion and Responses

Write a discussion on Conformity:  When did you give in, and when did you resist?

Directions

You should read the chapter and listen to the lecture on conformity before you reply to this post.

POST:  Add a new discussion by Thursday @ 11:59 p.m. To post, just click “reply” at the top of the thread below. Please DO NOT upload an attachment.  We should be able to read your post in the forum without having to open any additional documents. You will not be able to see your classmates’ posts until after your initial post. In your post, please reflect on and answer the following questions in detail:

1. Describe one time where you were pressured to conform and gave in.  How did you feel and what were the consequences?  How did this impact your future actions? ( Please think of a normal thing)
2. Describe one time where you were pressured to conform, but resisted.  How did you feel and what were the consequences?  What impact did this have on your beliefs about conforming? ( Please think of a normal thing)

REPLY:   to at least two of your peers’ posts. Please include a detailed response to both of the following questions in your replies:

1. Comment on how you can relate to what they were thinking or experiencing.
2. Give advice on how to resist conforming if your peer was in a similar situation in the future.

Please try to respond to students that do not yet have replies, so that everyone has an equal chance for interaction.  We don’t want to have 10 posts to the same discussion, and zero for another!

Discussion Guidelines

Read and respond to others’ posts as well, keeping in mind some basic rules for netiquette (Links to an external site.):

Be kind and respectful to others
Use full sentences
Don’t use too much jargon
Treat others online as you wish to be treated
Use language that supports others

For this post, share only what you are comfortable discussing. Remember, the information posted by your fellow students should not be shared with anyone outside of the class. Please be respectful of your classmates. LEcture videos attached.

https://www.3cmediasolutions.org/privid/227565?key…

https://www.3cmediasolutions.org/privid/227568?key…

POST 1

Peer 1- By watching the powerpoints and reading the chapters conformity is a type of social influence. There is normative social influence and informative social influence. In my personal experience I have experienced a normative social influence. Like many, out of highschool and first year of college I was getting out of my comfort zone and experiencing many different emotions and sometimes doing things that I didn’t really like for example, going out to parties and just hanging around people who now I would not consider “my people”. I would find myself taking sips of alcohol and when I would do it I knew deep down that I didn’t like it but all of my friends were doing it and I remember someone in the background was saying things like “boring”, “lame” and much more. I let that get to my head and I was easily influenced. For a while I felt like I was stuck in this funk and I remember that at one point it was really fun, going out and meeting new people especially since it was my first year in college it felt like when I would go out and do these things with people I just met it felt like a sense of belonging, but at the time that was all I knew. When I was reading chapter four I came across something that stood out to me on page 121 it mentioned how “we conform to the behavior of others because as physical reality becomes increasingly uncertain, people rely more and more on social reality.” Reading that made me better understand why I did certain things before. I would feel tired often, it took away time from things that I actually enjoyed doing, I would find myself not doing too well in school, feeling very unmotivated I started to create bad habits and I did not like the way I felt about myself and I felt like I wasn’t being my true authentic self. As I began to explore more of myself and getting a sense of who I am and who I want to be I started realizing that I don’t like partying or drinking When reading one of the chapters in the book, it talks about self esteem and security (page 126)  I noticed that these past years after realizing how it made me feel I wanted better for myself. I have always been a pretty confident person with pretty good self esteem which was why I was able to recognize this so fast and want to do better for myself. I started doing things for myself unapologetically, I was able to say “no” to things that did not make me feel good or that I just simply did not want to do. I realized that at this point I didn’t care if I was being “lame” and I realized that these little habits and actions were benefiting me because I started to grow a strong bond with myself and I started to be so secure with myself that I knew no matter what anybody said, it did not phase me. Of course I still want to go out with my friends here and there but now with this growth I made with myself I created some boundaries when it came to going out. When offered a drink I just said “no thank you, I am okay” or when I thought it was time to go home, I did and that was something that I struggled with before, I would stay because I didn’t want to seem boring even though I was exhausted. I can now say that confronting these feelings and wanting better for my physical health was one of the best decisions ever because I still can have fun and do what I please. Now I feel so much more free and I can now carry these traits with me forever and apply them to anything in my current life!

POST 2

Peer 2 I remember during my first year in high school being pressured to confirm and give in to the pressure. I became friends with five boys from the school. At the start, they seemed great friends and were always into sports and other entertaining sports. We soon became very close friends and started hanging out after school. Over weekends, we would hang out except on Sundays because I am from a Christian family and my family is strict about going to church on Sundays and spending family time together. On the other hand, my friends were free to do anything over the weekends. They would go to parties friends’ homes and other places and show me videos and pictures of their moments. They often urged and demanded that I join them for one of the Sunday parties but I often refused. However, one fateful Sunday, after too much pressure from them and the feeling of being left out, I was forced to conform and give in to their demand even though I knew full well that such a decision would land me in trouble with my parents. I felt pressured but at the same time, I felt a sense of belonging because I decided to join my friends for the Sunday party. However, the consequences of my conformity were severe. after my parents discovered that I skipped Sunday church service to attend a party, I was grounded for more than three weekends. Furthermore, my dad took away my smartphone and demanded that I participate in church activities on the weekday after school. Whereas the consequences made me angry at my parents, they made me understand the negative impacts of conforming and surrendering to peer pressure. In another instance, other friends pressured me into taking alcohol for the first time. I had never used any drugs or tasted alcohol before. My friends at school often joked about it and pushed me to try it out claiming how great drugs and alcohol were. Whenever we hung out together, they would drink some beers and laugh at me when I refused their demands to try alcohol. They often saw me as naïve and lame for not trying alcohol with them. In their eyes, I was not a “cool guy” that girls at school preferred cool guys. Such comments placed a lot of pressure on me but I refused to conform. I strongly resisted their pressure. I felt proud of myself for not allowing them to influence me negatively because I knew and understood the consequences of alcohol or drug addiction. Consequently, my decision not to give in to their pressure positively impacted my academics because I scored good grades. On the other hand, they performed poorly at school because of drug use and alcohol abuse. This incident significantly impacted my beliefs about conforming. It made me believe that conforming can negatively impact your life in the long run, even though it creates a sense of belonging and “coolness” among friends in the short term. I learned that people can suffer severe negative consequences in their life for conforming to peer pressure.