Conformity: What’s Worth Losing Apart of Our Dignity?

Christina Tran

As a former Colorado resident myself, I couldn’t help but to click on this article titled: “Now That It’s Legal, Colorado Teens Think Pot Is Less Cool”.

Colorado legalized the usage of recreational marijuana in 2012 and hear this oddly surprising new release: the usage of weed amongst teenagers have gone down since. This statement undermines a key argument of anti-legalization as some studies have suggested legalization would increase weed usage amongst adolescents. These studies are the reason why many states have yet to legalize recreational use.

Not only are teens not utilizing the drug as frequently, they are claiming that it’s less risky. In 2011, 58% of teens stated that pot was a risky drug while in 2014, 54% state it’s a risky drug. A cannabis businessman Kayvan Khalatbari states that kids don’t view weed as a cool drug anymore but more so an old person’s drug.

This all ties back to the psychology theory of how teenagers conform to peer pressure and engage in activities simply because they are deemed “cool” and “rebellious”. To a teen, anything they can’t do seems that much more attractive and appealing, right? Although I understand the whole ideology of conformity and the strong influence of peer pressure, I couldn’t help but to be somewhat appalled when I read this article.

Though, let’s tackle the psychology behind how strong conformity influences can be as well as the reasons why people conform.

A social psychologist named Solomon Asch conducted one of the most famous conformity experiments in 1951.

Participants of this experiment were shown a line and three other lines and asked to choose which line was equivalent in length to the first line. When the participants were asked to do this individually, all of them choose the obvious line that was equivalent. However, when participants were inserted in a group where the other participants (actors) all choose a much longer line, 75% of the participants agreed with the rest of the group as well. Meaning 75% of the participants conformed although they very much knew the correct answer.

More similarly, Jenness was the first psychologist to study conformity in 1932. He utilized a glass bottled filled with beans and he asked participants to estimate how many beans they thought were inside. He then put all the participants together and asked the group to come up with a number. Afterward, he interviewed the participants individually and asked if they wanted to change their answer to match with the group’s number, or keep their original answer. Almost all of the participants changed their individual guesses to be closer to the group estimate.

Deautsch and Gerard identified two key reasons in 1955 on why people conform: influential influence and normative influence.

Informational influence is when people change their behavior in order to be correct. This occurs in situations in which people are unconfident about their response and therefore, seek help in others who are better informed and more knowledgeable. These people are used as a guide for our own behaviors. For example, a less knowledgeable student in algebra class might look to a smart student and utilize their answer.

Normative Influence derives from the desire to avoid punishments or gain rewards. For example, some of the participants of the Holocaust conformed due to avoiding punishment from higher authority, even if they strongly disagreed with the mass murders. Likewise, a Colorado teen might start using pot to gain the reward of their peers liking them.

Going back to the reason why I was somewhat appalled by the results, I’ve always been one to be against conforming to something simply because “it’s cool”. I would be a complete liar if I claimed I never gave into peer pressure-there have been a few moments in my life that my insecurity overcame my rationality and I threw away my morals for a short period to fit in. However, the key word is a few. It saddens me when I hear teenagers engaging in activities simply because they were pressured to or didn’t have enough confidence in themselves to understand that their morals are more important than “looking cool”.

So…before more teenagers used pot because it was illegal therefore, more badass? And now they are using it less because hey, it’s legal so now it’s an old person drug and isn’t as badass?

If you want to go smoke pot, do it. If you don’t want to smoke pot, don’t do it. Do whatever you want to do because YOU want to do it for pleasure, not to look cool.

I understand the strong influences of conformity and how they can overtake an insecure teenager’s mind however, please never lose your dignity enough to partake in something simply because it’s deemed “cool”. Nothing is cool enough to lose your morals over.

Xoxo,

Chrissy

Sources:

http://www.simplypsychology.org/conformity.html

http://www.netplaces.com/psychology/social-interactions-and-interpersonal-behavior/conformity-and-peer-pressure.htm

http://thoughtcatalog.com/james-b-barnes/2014/08/now-that-its-legal-colorado-teens-think-pot-is-less-cool/

http://psychology.about.com/od/socialinfluence/f/conformity.htm