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However, when they cannot make a choice, whey will always follow others action. That is why when one of the girls decides to buy the dress, the other one will most likely follow and buy the dress also. These can be explained by the psychological theory of conformity. From chapter 10, we have learnt that conformity Is a kind of social Influence. As people would Like to adhere to social norms, which Is the rules, laws or cultural conventions that regulate our life, they will most likely change their altitudes without a direct request from others.
There has been some survey that was held by different psychologists to study about the features of conformity. One of the famous studies is the test carried out by Solomon Cash. In the study, Cash has asked the participants to match line lengths. When an unanimous group of people choose the wrong answer, the majority of the participants cannot remain independent and they will follow the group to choose the wrong answer even though most of their original choice is correct. These can clearly explain the concept of conformity. Conformity can bring us advantages. For example, when the government
Intended to Introduced the Moral and National Education (MEN) to be one of the compulsory subjects last year, which is believed that the government wants to use this policy to ‘brainwash’ Hong Kong students. At first, only a small amount of people took actions to ask the government to cancel that policy and the government refused to accept their opinions. But after a couple of weeks, more and more people Join. They took hunger strike and class boycott. Students also wore black clothes to school and put some black ribbons on their school bags, writing anti-MEN.
I was one of the students that put the ribbons on their bags. Actually, I am not really concern about the issue at first and I was only influenced by my classmates to take those actions. This is also a case of conformity and it shows that conformity can bring us advantages also. We can use conformity to monitor the actions of the government and to stop their actions as soon as possible when we find that they have made some bad polices. Example, when I was in secondary, I start to attach more importance to my studies and want to strive for excellence in every subject.
At that time, most of my friends take at least three tutorial classes after school. Therefore, as most of us think that our Chinese teacher was teaching not so well, many of them take tutorial class from those large-scaled tutorial school. I also take the tutorial class although I am not sure about those techniques to answer questions can really help me to get a satisfying grade in HISSED. I Just follow my friends to Join the class to get a sense of security. However, I only did get a 4 in Chinese in my HISSED exam.
Now I really regret as I think that I eave wasted much money and time and I should actually do more past papers or exercises instead of using the so-called useful skills in the exams. The other example is that when salt is said to be useful to get rid of radiation after the nuclear plant incident happened in Japan, many Hong Kong people go and buy dozens of packs of salt. They are actually not sure whether salt can really prevent radiation but they still go to buy salts as they find that many people go and buy many packs of salts.
Long queues appear in nearly all supermarkets or small shops that sell salts. At that time, there is a shortage of salt and price of salt become very high in those small shops. Also, people that ware not able to buy the salts felt worried about their families’ health. These also show that conformity will bring us some negative impacts. To conclude, conformity happens everywhere in our daily life. People always want to follow others action to reduce their own mistakes. But we should maintain our independent thinking as conformity will sometimes bring us disadvantages but not only advantages.