Example research essay topic: Human Behavior Social Norms - 710 words

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Human Behavior There is an assumption that human behavior is influenced by forces outside the persons (by other persons and situational factors). The aim of this paper is to examine and to discuss the role of these social forces and the role of the social influence and social cognition. As far as human behavior is examined as the set of activities performed by persons, these activities are obviously influenced by a range of factors, such as emotions, attitudes, values, culture, ethics, rapport, authority, coercion, persuasion, to mention a few. However, all of these factors can be divided into two general groups of forces outside the individual: the influence of situational factors and influence of other persons.

Human behavior may be influenced by other persons on a variety of levels and ways. The presence of other people (in the capacity of spectators or co-actors) can influence our performance of the task. This process is also known as social facilitation. At the same time, the increased level of behavioral arousal can result in social interference and negatively influence the performance of difficult, unfamiliar and complex tasks. The intentional and planned persuasion by other persons may influence and change our behavior and opinions. Yet, the vast majority of social influence is expressed in the form of social norms and rules that are expressed in more delicate manner.

The compliance and conformity can be examined as the attempts to adjust to a social environment with its general subjective social norms and standards of behavior. The compliance to social norms occurs in results of a direct request, whereas conformity can be examined as reaction to unspoken group pressure. The ambiguity of a situation (e. g. the people prefer to listen to the opinion of the majority, when they are not sure in correctness of their actions), the size of this majority, as well as personal characteristics of the persons in charge (including their social status in the group and their self-esteem), many influence the conformity. The man, for example, can agree with the social norms and can privately be against them (so called public conformity), or, sometimes, the man can change his opinion in order to conform the social group (so called private acceptance).

The participation in a mob or crowd is another kind of social influence that may force people changing their behavior. The psychology of a crowd allows the person to submerge his identity in a group. This process is also called de individuation and involves such factors like anonymity (that allows to reduce the level of accountability), the distracting of attention to external events (that decreases self-awareness), and relatively high level of arousal. Understanding the role of social cognition is also very important because social cognition is the way what and how we think about ourselves, social groups, other people and social worlds. Social cognition examined human behavior as an interaction of behavior, personal factors and the environment. It implies that although human behavior may be controlled by situations, the person may interpret different situations in a different way, and, by doing this, the same set of stimuli may cause different behavioral responses from different persons or even from the same man at different times.

In addition, the person has not only the need to find out the reasons of other persons behavior, but also feels the desire to comprehend and to understand the external events, and to gain certainty about the correctness of his behavioral social patterns. The person consistently compares his impressions with objective data (the reality test). When the person is unable to obtain objective criteria, he compares his convictions with the convictions of other persons. When these convictions coincide, the person feels subjective feeling of correctness of his actions. At the same time, the opinions of other persons are used by him in capacity of social criteria.

In order to achieve cognitive consensus, personal point of view is brought into accordance with the position of the majority, and is coordinated with persons behavior. When the person experiences cognitive dissonance, he either changes his convictions to make them comply fully with his behavior, or changes his behavior to make it comply fully with social standards. In such a way, the role of social influence on human behavior is significant.

Research essay sample on Human Behavior Social Norms