Conformity or Non-Conformity

Conformity or Non-Conformity

Introduction

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother is a popular publication of 20th century. James McBride drafted this autobiography with clear projections of alternating emotions. The publication illustrates a combination of social pressures, prejudice, conformity, and stereotyping. His mother is a White Jewish woman. She married a Black man. The book narrates the conflicting emotions, which demonstrates the actions & perceptions of early settings. The narration revolves around the issues which a White woman had to face upon marrying a Blackman (McBride, 1996).

In this write up, the discussion examines how various principles of psychology explain the behavior of Mrs. Ruth. The discussion uses the principles of groups' influence, social pressures, conformity & non-conformity, in order to illustrate Ruth's actions. Towards the end, the write up presents a conclusion.

Discussion

Principles of Conformity & non-conformity

An individual life carries a combination of contrasting ideas & behaviors (Russel, 2008). Ruth came from a White family. However, she fell in love with a black man. Upon her mother's dead, her family insisted her to stay. However, Ruth chose to leave and came to New York. Ruth's actions can be explained by the principles of non-conformity. The principles of psychology explain the influence of social groups. Conformity refers to a social influence which enables people to modify their actions, beliefs & behaviors, in order to be part of a group (Russel, 2008). Ruth chose to be non-conformist in her behavior with her sister & father. She came from Jewish family & married a Christian. She completely refused to entertain the influence of the social pressure. Her newly found love & Christian affinity restrained her from conforming to her birth social group. Ruth seemed to challenge the traditional social pressures. She rejected the social pressures from the Jewish community & embraced Christianity. Ruth's attitude suggested that she may not possess the elements of collectivism. She had individualistic beliefs, which drove her to make her own choices for life. On the other hand, she seemed to conform to the newly found social group. She became an active member of the Church. Ruth's case can be the subject of Identification.

Identification is a type of conformity which encourages an individual to feel satisfied in a relationship. The relationship is typically the one through which we are identifying ourselves in a social group (McLeod, 2007). In Ruth's case, it was her husband who was a Black Christian. An individual conforms to a group because of a number of reasons including lack of perceived alternatives (Myers, 2010). In Ruth's case, she did not care about disapproval of group member because she explored another alternative-Dennis.

Diverse Groups & the Groups' influence

Asch's studied the concept of group pressure. The study found that around one-third of participants agreed to the groups' results. They did not want to share their peculiar results as it would make them different from the group. The experiment conveyed that intelligent people would not conform to group's findings, when they identify ...