Anna Tosun
Edge columnist
Pressure to conform is a by-product of the natural desire to belong. Whether in schools or any where in the rest of the world. People always tend to conform both because it’s more convenient, but also because it is a human nature. Going with the flow makes people feel safe and right. After all, everyone does it.
Numerous psychological experiments have already been able to prove that the human tendency to agree extends to self-denial. Forced, identical thinking and acting, on the other hand, sometimes leads to rather stupid results and decisions.
Serge Moscovici made an experiment where he showed his test subjects colored slides, all of them blue areas. He then had the test participants name the color that the slides showed. But what the subjects didn’t know was that there were two initiated troublemakers in their group who vehemently claimed that the slide was green. And indeed: After that, the number of those who said the slide was actually green increased significantly: A total of 8.4 percent of all answers were green. 32 percent of the subjects stated at least once that they had seen a green slide – although the color vision of all participants had previously been tested as completely normal and the images were clearly blue.
Some teenagers literally spoil their lives by putting them in “peer pressure”.
Peer pressure can lead to a loss of individuality. Extreme peer pressure will lead you to follow what your peers are feeling. Their pressure can force you to go through everything they think right. They tend to blindly imitate the crowds; They record their preferences of fashion, clothing, hair, music and general living conditions. Peer pressure can actually cause you to lose your taste of life and empower yourself to start liking what you want. Peer pressure is the human tendency to join the bandwagon in which, man loses his original way of looking at life.
Peer pressure isn’t always bad. It can help you analyze and look at yourself on the path of life. Some of the practices that the masses follow can actually teach you the way of life. You can change yourself for the better. Looking at what others are doing can help you bring about a positive shift in your thinking. If you’re selective, peer pressure can actually result in a positive change in your path of life.
For most people it plays a big role in their life and they can’t ignore the peer pressure. It already exists a long time and there are negative and positive effects but the important thing is to minimize the negative effects and just try to look at the positive effects.
Sources:
https://karrierebibel.de/selbstannahme/
https://aptparenting.com/negative-positive-effects-of-peer-pressure