Group pressure is a sociala phenomenon whose essence is that people within the community feel forced to agree with a certain opinion, if it is supported by the majority in the environment. It is a kind of instrument, with the help of which society (group) influences an individual, creating a certain framework for a person, which forces him to obey the requirements of the environment.
Group pressure can be formulated by differentways: coercion, demand, request, and just the existence of society and its expectations. A group member has the choice to comply or not to submit to community pressure. In addition, you can obey in varying degrees: from the adoption of the norms of the group to the pretense. The process of group pressure exists where there is a conflict between the individual and the opinion of the environment. The measure of resilience to the environment is the level of subordination to the group, when the opinion of the environment is perceived by a person as a conflict. There are external subordination, when its opinion is accepted only externally, but in fact, the individual resists, and internal, in this case, the individual actually supports the majority opinion. Internal submission is the result of overcoming conflict in favor of the group.
The individual can push his own environmentrequirements for yourself. This is the cause of conflicts between the individual and the group. Making your own requirements for the environment is the reason for exemption from liability for actions.
The phenomenon of group pressure in social psychology also has another name - conformism. At the level of everyday perception, group pressure was recorded in the tale of the naked king.
The reason for submitting to such pressure islack of experience in making decisions individually in connection with the fear of the unknown, independence, responsibility, life in which no one will tell you how to do it.
In studies of the influence of pressurethe community revealed one more position of the individual in relation to the group - the position of negativism. When putting pressure on an individual, there is resistance to pressure, which at first glance seems an independent position, because the standards of society are denied. But it is only at first glance, negativity can be perceived as a form of extreme denial of pressure. In fact, negativism is not true independence, on the contrary, it is a specific version of submission, but only inside out. After all, if an individual aims to resist a group, then he depends on it, since he needs to actively defend the anti-group position, and therefore be tied to the opinion of the community. Therefore, the position opposing the pressure of the environment is independence and independence. Group pressure exists only where there is a conflict between the environment and the individual, and overcoming the conflict is carried out in favor of the group.
Excessive group pressure andthe formation of a free partnership with the environment, with another individual, requires renunciation of claims for custody by others, for life in a protected world, for some guarantees for the future. Unfortunately, such a decision may not be possible for everyone, can overcome the desire to preserve children's dreams, which will force them to continue to seek support in the group, in religion and so on. Together with the illusion of security, they prefer group pressure and the fear of being rejected for insubordination. And the individual who chose responsibility is free from submission to the pressure of society. Such an individual gets the opportunity to apply group pressure for good, using it as a motivation for mobilization.
