Conformity and Alienation
Alienation
• Change can be difficult for some people
• Emile Durkheim
 Anomie – condition of industrial workers without
roots or norms as they struggled to survive.
• Karl Marx
 Alienation – proletariat (workers) or lumpenproletariat
(unemployed) could not reach their full potential
because so many aspects of their lives were controlled
and exploited by others
 Reasonably paid employment, decent housing
Alienation
• Term has broadened over time.
• Anyone who does not share the major values
of society and feels like an outsider.
 Discrimination (ie. exclusion from society for
various factors)
 Dissatisfaction
Alienation
• Refers to an individual separation from a
community or group of people in general
• This is also known as an anomie
• Refers to a personal condition resulting in a
lack of norms
• i.e. A totalitarian society would produce an
anomic individual such as Hitler
• Anomic: lack of social or moral standards in an
individual or society
Alienation
• Everyone has experienced alienation from society at some
point in their life.
– Someone who loses their job and becomes unemployed might
feel alienation toward a society that seems to value wealth and
success.
– For some, alienation becomes so severe that they give up and
turn to crime or poverty.
– Suicide and substance abuse can be both the result of, and an
explanation for, alienation.
• But not all alienation is bad; some people may become
reformers and lobby to change an aspect of society.
– Women in the 1920s and 1930s experienced significant alienation
from the prevailing social attitudes towards what was a woman’s
role.
– Led individuals to challenge the accepted view and become
leaders in the fight to achieve legal, financial, and political reforms
to benefit women.
Isolation
• Known as a state of seclusion
• i.e. a lack of contact with people
– May stem from:
– Bad relationships
– Deliberate choice
– Contagious disease
– Repulsive personal habits
– Mental illness
– Substance abuse
Conformity
• Process whereby an individual’s attitudes,
beliefs and behaviours are influenced by other
people
• Could be the result of social pressure
• People often conform to achieve a sense of
security in a group of people – a feeling that
makes one ‘belong’
Conformity – Social Groups
• When social scientists examine the topic of groups, they state
that a group is two or more people who have these four
characteristics:
– They interact regularly and influence each other.
– They believe they have something in common.
– They have an informal or formal social structure with leaders and
followers.
– They have a group consensus on certain values, behaviours, and
goals.
• By looking at those characteristics you can probably think of the
several areas in your life where you see other people talk and
influence thinking and emotions.
– People who just happen to be waiting in a line at the same time
would not be considered a social group. They are a collection of
people or what social scientists call an aggregate. They interact only
briefly, if at all, and have little influence on one another.
Conformity
• People adopt the values and ideals from their
families, friends, and other groups to which they
belong.
• People also tend to adopt the values of the
society in which they live.
• A great majority of people in Canadian society
tend to have similar ways of thinking. Even
though everyone may not agree on which
political party should be in power, for example,
most do believe in the fundamental freedoms of
democracy.
Subjective Vilidity
• Subjective Validity
– Term coined by social scientists
– all people believe that their attitudes are right and proper
• Being with groups helps to strengthen the idea of
subjective validity and that is why humans tend to
enjoy being around like-minded people. Social scientist
further argue that without subjective validity people
would experience uncertainty, a feeling most people do
not like.
• Have you ever had your feelings or actions validated by
your peers?
Roots of Conformity
• Social scientists M. Deutsch and H.B. Gerrard identified
two types of conformity.
• Informational influence
– is the human desire to accept information from another,
admired person who indicates that the information is valid.
For example, a parent may tell a young child that smoking
is bad. That child will conform to what the parent states
because the child admires the parent.
• normative influence
– the pressure to conform to the positive expectations of
others. For example, some young adults will take on the
same job as a parent because it has always been expected
that they would.
Social Change and Conformity
• Conformity has the ability to discourage social
change. People tend to do the same thing the
same way year after year and to resist the
temptation to do things differently.
• Conformity also allows people to feel as if they
fit in, and this can have serious consequences
especially if it encourages people to accept
practices that they know are wrong.
Conformity in Contemporary Society
• Most people conform to the standard values
and norms without even realizing they are
doing so
• Some degree of conformity is necessary for
societies to function
• i.e. Stopping at a red light means that you are
conforming to the law and the good and
safety of society
Conformity and Youth
• Pre-teens and teenagers face many issues
related to conformity
• Pulled between the desire to be seen as
unique individuals and desire to belong to a
group where they feel accepted
– i.e. wearing the latest fashion, cutting your hair
into a certain style, smoking, changing the type of
music you listen to
• All of these are examples of conforming to a
social norm
Key Questions
• In groups of 2-4, discuss the following questions:
• What groups in society may feel socially
isolated?
• Why is this?
• What groups in society are forced to conform?
What would you do?
Scenario 1
• You are waiting to cross the street and the
light is red. A group of pedestrians start to
cross the street before the green light even
though there remains some risk of oncoming
traffic. What do you do?
What would you do?
Scenario 2
• You are looking for garbage at a concert. You
find one but it is full and you see people just
throwing garbage on the ground around the
garbage can. What do you do?
What would you do?
Scenario 3
• You have been standing in line for hours
waiting to buy tickets for a concert / sports
game. A group of 6 people try to ‘bud’ in line
with a friend. The people waiting start yelling
and objecting as there are only a specific
amount of tickets. What do you do?
What would you do?
Scenario 4
• A senior student approaches you and a bunch
of your friends offering to sell you his / her old
assignments and copy of tests for a class. All
of your friends agree to this and are waiting
for your decision. What do you do?
What would you do?
Scenario 5
• You have just started a new job and are sitting
around with your new co-workers. Someone
tells a joke that is very racist and everyone is
laughing and starts telling more racist jokes
that you find offensive. What do you do?
What would you do?
Scenario 6
• A bunch of you are at a friends for dinner—
after dinner all your friends get up from the
table and leave their plates as you are late for
a party. You have been brought up to always
clear your plate from the table and help clean
up. What do you do?
Discussion
• Which situation would be the most easy and
most difficult in terms of resisting conformity?
• Why?
A Long Walk Home
THE PEOPLE, THE COMMUNITY, THE
MOVEMENT THAT CHANGED THE
WORLD
• http://www.montgomeryboycott.com/
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott
– political and social protest campaign
– 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA
– oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its
public transit system
– many important figures in the civil rights
movement were involved in the boycott, including
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
• The boycott caused crippling financial deficit for the
Montgomery public transit system, because the city's
black population who were the principal boycotters were
also the bulk of the system's paying customers. The
campaign lasted from December 1, 1955, when Rosa
Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for
refusing to surrender her seat to a white person, to
December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling, Browder v.
Gayle, took effect, and led to a United States Supreme
Court decision that declared the Alabama and
Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be
unconstitutional.
Segregated Bus System
• Under the system of segregation used on Montgomery
buses, white people who boarded the bus took seats in the
front rows, filling the bus toward the back. Black people
who boarded the bus took seats in the back rows, filling the
bus toward the front. Eventually, the two sections would
meet, and the bus would be full. If other black people
boarded the bus, they were required to stand. If another
white person boarded the bus, then everyone in the black
row nearest the front had to get up and stand, so that a
new row for white people could be created. Often when
boarding the buses, black people were required to pay at
the front, get off, and re-enter the bus through a separate
door at the back. On some occasions bus drivers would
drive away before black passengers were able to reboard.
Rosa Parks
• When Rosa Parks refused on the
afternoon of Dec. 1, 1955, to
give up her bus seat so that a
white man could sit, it is unlikely
that she fully realized the forces
she had set into motion and the
controversy that would soon
swirl around her. Other black
women had similarly refused to
give up their seats on public
buses and had even been
arrested, including two young
women earlier that same year in
Montgomery, Ala. But this time
the outcome was different.