Reaserch+Paper

Sarach Studdiford-->Maggie Olson A. Correctly site dictionary quote used on First papge, first line B. Either rid page four, lines 14-19 of block quote, or expand and correctly site C. Correct run-on sentence oin page 5-6, lines 22,23, 1-4, respectively D. Correctly site Henry Ward beecher's quote on page 8, lines 7-8

Kara Vogelbacker-->Maggie Olson A. Capitalize "laymen's" on page one, line 2 B. Eliminate personal pronouns, espically those on page 5, lines 14-15 C. Correct Indentations, make sure all are correct

week tuesday, March _16, 2010

At least 2 additional pages (minimum of 6 pages total) due: day of week wendsday, March _17, 2010

At least 2 additional pages (minimum of 8 pages total) due: day of week friday, March 18 or 19, 2010

Below is where I am supposed to upload the content of my paper.

A minimum of 2 total pages due: day of week friday, March 12_, 2010

 Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines society as a “companionship or association with one's fellows” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). In laymen’s terms, a society is a group of people who interact with each other. Society influences everybody. No matter whom you are, young or old, tall or short, black, white, brown or purple, who you are has been shaped by who you are surrounded by. What you dress like, what slang you use, the music you listen to; these are all choices we think we make on our own terms, but in reality, they are almost entirely out of our hands. Social influence is the study of exactly that. Decisions we make that, unbeknownst to us, are actually wrought by the people around us. However, there are millions of different societies throughout the world. Trying to figure how all those different societies influence the individual would be nearly impossible. So let’s concentrate on just one society: high school; more specifically, Springfield Township High School. Social influence affects the lives of students at Springfield Township High School through such social phenomenon as group polarization, deindividuation, and conformity. The subcategories of social influence sound pretty complex, but in reality they are relatively simple to understand. Take for instance, group polarization. Group polarization is simply the tendency of people to make decisions that are more extreme when they are in a group, as opposed to a decision made alone or independently (Macionis). We tend to think that group decisions average out the preferences of participants. But the psychological research doesn't support this conclusion. In fact group discussions tend to polarize groups so that, rather than people's views always being averaged, their initial preferences can become exaggerated and their final position is often more extreme than it was initially.  So if a group of people, who independently are moderately liberal thinking, when brought together to make a decision, would make an extremely liberal decision. Group polarization affects students in very subtle ways, but certainly has a large effect on them.Take, for example, a disruption in class. While each individual student may be moderately or somewhat disobedient, when put into a larger group of other only moderately rebellious students, the group may act out in much more radical ways then any individual student would have alone. Group polarization can also be applied to other frequent high school occurrences, for instance, experimenting with alcohol. Unfortunately, statistics have shown that underage drinking occurs in the lives of teenagers atmany high schools, and though most teenagers have been taught about the dangers of alcohol from a very early age, (through programs such as //D.A.R.E.)// alcohol still is present in many of these high schoolers’ lives. While independently, perhaps only a few of these teenagers may have had an interest in experimenting with alcohol early on, when put together in a group, say at a party or with a group of friends, it seems to be a common occurrence. According to AboveTheInfluence.com, more than “19% of drivers between the ages of 16 and 20 who died in motor vehicle accidents were drinking alcohol” (AboveTheInfluence.com).Had there been no influence from the group, perhaps these numbers would not be so high, but group polarization certainly is present, and the effects of it are obvious. Another complex word, but simple concept, is deindividuation. Deindividuation is immersion in a group to the point at which the individual ceases to be seen as such (Macionis). Deindividuation has been seen in history many times, in such extreme cases as Nazi Germany or Communist Russia, but in reality, deindividuation is much more common than in these very extreme instances. Deindividuation is seen in the military, on sports teams, in law enforcement or in fraternities and sororities (Llyod).

At least 2 additional pages (minimum of 4 pages total) due: day of week tuesday, March _16, 2010

 One example of a deindividuation experiment was Philip G. Zimbardo’s famous Stanford prison experiment. In this experiment, Zimbardo assigned roles to two groups of willing participants; 24 undergraduate male students attending Stanford University. One group of twelve were the prisoners, and the other group of twelve were the guards. The guards were given shifts, matching uniforms, reflective sunglasses and Billy clubs. The prisoners were given a cell, a cot, and the knowledge that they could stop and leave the experiment at any time (Macionis). The originally intended 6-week experiment had to be stopped after only 6 days, due to the extreme hostility shown by the guards. They displayed extremely authoritative tendencies, going as far as to physically harm the prisoners. What is even more interesting, is that the prisoners accepted all of this punishment, with only two of the twelve walking away early, despite the knowledge that they could. “During the experiment, subjects assigned to the prison guard group behaved aggressively towards prisoner group members, which Zimbardo attributed to the fact that the guards were given uniforms which assisted anonymity and were able to diffuse responsibility for their actions. Psychologists theorize that deindividuation results in part from the anonymity and ability to diffuse responsibility that is offered by being part of a group”  (Lloyd). Because the guards were given matching uniforms and glasses to shield their eyes, they no longer felt responsible as an individual, but felt like they were in fact a group, and therefore no longer personally responsible for their actions.  Deindividuation can come in many forms for the average high school student. Like aforementioned, deindividuation is not always a negative thing. Oftentimes it is rather innocent, something that just naturally occurs as a part of being with other people. Take for example, a sports team. Many coaches take the “team before you” approach to their respective sport. When you play for a highs school sports team, you are expected to have a level of loyalty to the team, a level of dedication that means if you have a personal issue that would negatively affects the team, you either deal with it or quit. The same idea goes for actually playing your respective sport. On the field, you no longer are an individual; it’s not necessarily about you anymore. If you would like to win the game, you must except that you will not score every goal and immerse yourself in your team so that all of you, as a team, not as individuals, may win. Another way high school students are affected by deindividuation is through cliques. Cliques are “ a narrow exclusive circle or group of persons; one held together by common interests, views, or purpose ” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). In the instance of a clique as it refers to deindividuation, it is less the insider’s point of view as it is the outsider’s. Looking at a clique, say, “the jocks”, from the outside in, one tends to judge the group as a whole. One no longer sees each individual person, but instead sees the entire “jock” clique, as one being. One considers them all to think a certain way, dress a certain way, have the exact same opinions, when, in reality, they can be rather different. Oftentimes this judgment of others is not something one does out of hate or spite, but just as a natural reaction to what we see around us. People take from their surroundings and create bias and opinions based on our own life experiences. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst speaking of deindividuation, one must also mention diffusion of responsibly. While the deindividuation and diffusion of responsibility are not directly linked, they share many similarities, forinstance, both occur in large groups, and both include an individual no longer feeling personally responsible, but instead feeling as though they are part of a mass of people, and no longer as one person.

At least 2 additional pages (minimum of 6 pages total) due: day of week wendsday, March _17, 2010

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Diffusion of responsibility is a social phenomenon, which occurs when large groups of people are present in an emergency situation, and the simple vastness of the group causes no one to assist in said situation (Macionis). Diffusion of responsibility occurs when responsibility is not explicitly assigned. Therefore, no one technically is to blame. An example of diffusion of responsibility is that of Kitty Genovese. Genovese was a young woman who lived in New York City in the 1960s. One night, on her way home from work, she was attacked and stabbed by a man, Winston Moseley. Though the attacked happened in public, and though Genovese cried for help and reportedly over twelve people were aware of the situation, nobody stopped to help her or to call the police. She died only after her attacker revisited her 10 minutes later, stabbed her again, and raped her (Gado). You may ask yourself, how could this happen? How is it that so many people did nothing to help a fellow human being who was obviously in need? The answer lies in diffusion of responsibility; when more people are present less people feel the responsibility to help out. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Conformity occurs when an individual accepts both cultural goals as well as institutionalized means (Macionis). “Fitting in” provides an individual with a certain level of security and belonging. However at an extreme, conformity can be dangerous. Such things as groupthink, a type of thought exhibited by members of a group who do not want to cause conflict in order to reach consensus, and the spiral of silence, which is the idea that an individual is less likely to voice their opinion if they feel they are in a minority and will be rejected by the majority if they speak, are both negative and potentially dangerous consequences of conformity (Macionis). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Dr. Vasily Klucharev from the F.C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging in The Netherlands, says"We often change our decisions and judgments to conform with normative group behavior, is no doubt that we look to the behavior and judgment of others for information about what will be considered expected and acceptable behavior” (Klucharev). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Soloman Asch, a Polish psychologist, conducted an experiment to show the power of groups to generate conformity. “Asch recruited a small group of students to supposedly study visual perception. Before the experiment, he told all but one member of the group that the actual purpose of the experiment was to put pressure on the naïve participant” (Macionis). The results show the overt pressure of a group upon the thinking of an individual. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The experiment went as follows: two cards were shown to members of the group. On the first card contained a line of a certain length, and the second card contained three lines, one of which matched the length of the line on first card. It was obvious that choice “A” was the correct choice, however, Asch’s accomplices answered incorrectly until the naïve subject, seated so that he would be the next to last to answer, became uncomfortable and confused. Surprisingly, over one-third of the naïve subjects conformed to the group and answered incorrectly, despite the fact that they were obviously erroneous (Macionis). So why did they do that? Apparently, many of us are willing to compromise our own good judgment to avoid being different, and subsequently, running the risk of being rejected by the majority, even if the majority are strangers to us.

At least 2 additional pages (minimum of 8 pages total) due: day of week friday, March 18 or 19, 2010

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">High school students are subjected to conformity mush more than they even realize. Essentially, high school is very much about “fitting in”. In high school, everything you do, the music you listen to, the clothing you wear, the friends you have are all points of interest that your peers look at in order to judge you. Conformity is one of the only ways to be completely free from the judgment of your peers. “ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Social conformity might be based on reinforcement learning and that a conflict with group opinion could trigger a "prediction error" signal” (Klucharev). So essentially, conformity can be considered to be a neurological occurrence; the brain triggers you when you are rebelling too far away from the norm. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> It is important not to confuse conformity with peer pressure. “ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Peer pressure <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> refers to the influence exerted by a <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">[|peer group] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> in encouraging a person to change his or her <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">[|attitudes] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">, <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">[|values] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">, or <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">[|behavior] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> in order to <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">[|conform] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> to group <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">[|norms] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">” (Encyclopedia Brittanica). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Conformity, however, is an unspoken process where others influence an individual to the point that the individual decides to conform to the group’s attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, etc. The most prevalent difference is that when one is peer pressured, the peers of said individual are conscious of the pressure they are bestowing, while conformity is a more the result of subtle unconscious influences. That being said, peer pressure is certainly a way of convincing one to conform, but peer pressure and conformity are not necessarily synonyms. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> One needs only to look around the cafeteria at Springfield Township High School to notice how students have conformed. Groups of friends tend to act similarly, dress similarly, use the same slang, and enjoy the same forms of entertainment. Girls that play together on the same sports teams all seem to wear the same shoes, carry identical handbags, watch the same television shows, just as many of the members of the academic team have similar political views and enjoy the same music. Are these things accidental? Or do the individual member of these group subconsciously shape their thinking around what they see of others? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Sometimes, people conform consciously, in order to impress member of a group they wish to gain acceptance to. “ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">In-group members who conform strongly are core group members who are asserting the identity of the group, or peripheral members who are trying to impress the core members, perhaps to be accepted into the 'inner circle'” <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">(Changingminds.org). High School students often feel a desperate need to be accepted; anyone can think back to their high school days and remember wishing that they could be part of “the popular crowd”. This desire to be accepted is what drives people to conform. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> Henry Ward Beecher one said “ <span style="color: #202020; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others." He was absolutely right. Even though it may go unnoticed, even the smallest interaction can change a life. Someone else has in some way shaped everything one does. It is undeniable. <span style="color: #202020; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"> In high school, a period where you are emotionally, physically, and mentally growing, teenagers are certainly and especially susceptible to social influence, from peers, teacher, parents, and friends. Group polarization, conformity, and deindividuation are very present in high schools all around the world, not just in Springfield Township. Everyone has a different way of looking at thing, and his or her actions subsequently shape yours. High School is a time when one finds themselves, grows into themselves and prepares to enter the “real world”. So, in that respect, social influence is not something that should be thought of as a negative. One should not be embarrassed that they did not necessarily create their own person, but instead except the idea and realize that it is a two-way street. Such as the group has influence over the individual; the individual certainly has influence over the group. A group is not some anonymous mass; it is an assembly of individual people, each in their own way unique, and each just as powerful as the person next to them. No one man was born any greater then the next- and in that regard, social influence is not as powerful as one may think.