This is just nature – or is it?
If there is something that I find interesting in human behaviour, then it is when I meet people who in one sentence talk about “solidarity and community” and at the same time not seem to be aware that they at the same time use an “us and them” rhetoric. To me this is a clear sign that the social conformity and social control is integrated without any reflection at all and this is actually very common in our society. Let me explain where I observe social conformity e.g. in schools. For many years I did some research projects on learning processes, and one of these projects was located on different high schools. what I observed was that the hierarchy in some classrooms had an interesting form of social conformity. I observed specifically the behaviour of the students who acted as an alpha student and the interaction with other students. What I found interesting was that the alpha was not necessarily the smartest or intelligent student in the class, but acted as one. The really interesting observation was that some of the beta, theta etc students in the hierarchy made themselves look less smart and intelligent, so that they wasn’t a threat to the alpha student. In psychology we call this kind of behaviour “levelling”. The beta, theta etc students would rather conform to an unspoken rule in a hierarchy “to obey the alpha” and level their talents, just to be acknowledged by the alpha and the other group members. If the beta, theta etc students challenged the alpha student there were consequences – they were sanctioned from the group. When I questioned this kind of behaviour in discussion with the teachers etc most of them said “that’s just the way it is”, “it’s a good thing that the students know their place” and some of them also said “this is just how nature work” – and to me this absolutely non-reflected conformity.
You will never observe a pack of wolves obey an alpha wolf that was not suited for the position to be the best at leading the pack, and the same goes with herd of horses etc. Why is that? because in nature the pack of wolves and the herd of horses would never survive if not the alpha wolf or alpha horse had the whole community of interest. So it goes without saying; it makes no sense to obey an alpha person who has no interest in the community, but only in the powerful position in the hierarchy. If you think this sound familiar – I agree. It is in fact all around us and as such a huge part of social control. Back to my observations of the students who were levelling their talents. I was genuinely concerned what consequences this levelling behaviour could do on the long run to the students. These research findings with the students made me curious and I started to do several empiric studies on students life-history. My research showed that it was no coincidence that they “walked into the role” of beta, theta etc. They were conditioned during childhood to play that role from a very early age in their family system and unconsciously played the same role in other interactions. Thats why when you observe the psycho dynamics between family members and the psycho dynamics between friends have similar “manuscripts”.
Dive deep into social conformity
Many social experiments have been made by social psychologist on social conformity and if you’re curious to dive deep into this subject I’ll recommend looking into Solomon Asch and his conformity experiment. An experiment that shows how people would rather conform than to be sanctioned from the group. Another social experiment was made by Philip Zimbardo and yet another social experiment was made by Sherif & Sherif about group behaviour e.g. us vs them. Un a larger scale Stanley Milgram made some experiments on how far people would go to obey authority. All of these social experiments sadly come to the same conclusion that a majority of people would conform and obey no matter what. If you ask me why? My answer is “because the majority of people are conditioned to do so” and a huge part of this conditioning is using fear to control and manipulate people into conformity.
Anyway the reason why I touch on this subject was when I went to a party the other day and just had a feeling of dissonance strait from the start, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. In this case it was a party were only women were invited, I only knew the one who has invited me, but I’m always curious and open to meeting new people. This time though my intuition was whispering very clearly – why are you here?I went to the party out of politeness and thought something fun could happen e.g. singing and dancing. None of this happened. What did happen was me making an ironic comment about our theme of discussion, after I have listened enough to a talk about community and in same discussion a dividing and patronising talk about “us vs them” . Turned out that all of the women were a huge fan of the theme of discussion, so there was a sense of distance after my ironic comment. At first I thought well we don’t have to agree on everything it is actually okay to disagree, but not in this ” community”. I have done the “unforgivable” thing to question the rhetoric of the theme of discussion and by that I was not “one of them”. I could have reacted with being an opponent to them or I could have reacted with agreeing with them. None of this happened – instead I went silent. I was still joyful, and found it more interesting to watch how the discussion turned out between “the participants in this community”. This is what social conformity is all about – if you’re not agreeing with us you’re “them” – in this case me. The challenge is NOT to conform and stay loyal to yourself.
Stepping out of social conformity – stepping out of Psychological Games
One of the reasons that I made a free guide to hack Psychological Games that are going on in our everyday life, was to give you a possibility to step out of social conformity and social control. The first step to recognise social conformity is to see your own and others role in it. As long as you’re playing a Psychological Game you’re not being authentic, but is actually acting out roles and manuscript on a scene made by others or by yourself as a coping strategy to keep an illusion of control. As I see it is very important to understand life is not about social conformity, but about living the life you were meant to live in the first place. It’s about acknowledging your True and authentic self and listen to your Inner Wisdom without any social conformity or social control interfering. You can get my free guide here https://janniansel.simplero.com/link-page
