Our society is overwhelmed with the idea of appearing in a certain shape or form that matches the group we belong to or we want to belong to. Individuals work really hard trying to impress each other to be categorized in a social group whether at work, school, universities or clubs.
Indeed, not every aspect an individual adapts to get social conformity is believed in; some individuals just pretend they agree with certain values in order not to be left out without internally believing in it.
People form their values based on what they accept as appropriate or inappropriate, behaviours and attitudes in regards to their personality traits, their environment and the social constructs they are raised on. These norms are important as they give us a sense of how we behave in a certain context and the way we expect people to behave based on our values as well.
Each social group has its own behaviours and attitudes in which they expect members of the same group to act accordingly and any other individual or group of members who act differently is considered to be a competitor to the original group.
Accordingly, being part of a group has psychological consequences on the individual emotionally, cognitively and behaviourally. A person starts to look to oneself as “We” instead of “I”. The person is identified, then, as part of a group sharing similar characteristics with other members; a change in self-concept occurred when the individual adjusts to certain changes in this new social unit. In fact, psychologists are interested in studying the given phenomenon, specifically social psychology area.
Social psychology believes that having common ground with other group members eases the process of knowing one’s own behaviours and understanding them better. It helps in clarifying people’ behaviours, social constructs created and the reason group members see themselves as unbreakable and superior to other groups. We can find the effect of group norms affecting us in the way we tend to show people we accept wearing certain clothes or going to places that we usually don’t like, but we are trying to go with the flow of the group.
In addition to that, psychology draws our attention to the fact that social identity assumes that we join a group to accomplish our goals, satisfy our self-esteem needs and reduces uncertainty in our behaviours as other group members confirm it. Social identity is a factor that affects the way we deal in our everyday lives whether we are aware of it. It shapes a great part of our personalities and help us in making new relationships in a way that matches our norms and values and make us feel more comfortable to be with people how share our same norms without the need to argue.
It is important that when we change to be part of a social group, we don’t lose our identity as an individual; there should be a balance between the group norms and our norms.
