Group Conformity

A group is two or more individuals who share a set of norms, have role relationships and experience interdependent behaviours.

This is an interesting article on conformity, http://psychology.about.com/od/psychologyexperiments/a/conformityexper.htm

If someone does something or acts in a certain way, do you think you would follow as they lead or do what you think is correct? Watch the video below and you will be amazed what some people will do to fit in.

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs show that belonging as a big factor, people naturally want to belong to something. This might be a group of friends, a social society, a sports team or whatever. People need to fit somewhere to have that sense of belonging that everyone craves.

You can also belong to a group depending on your social class, the way you dress or where you shop. For example 'The Chav' It came into everyday language in 2005, I didn’t remember hearing it much before that. It refers to a type of youth, supposedly uncultured, maybe a bit anti-social, perhaps even violent, but certainly marked out, at least from the point of view of the critic, by very bad taste. Chavs are supposed to wear a lot of flashy jewellery, white trainers, baseball caps, sham designer clothes, girls expose a lot of mid-riff. Soloman 2006 states that reference groups may exert either a positive or negative influence on consumer behaviours. In most cases, consumers model their behaviour to be consistent with what they think a group expects of them. In some case though, consumers may try to distance themselves from other people or groups who function as avoidance groups. He or she may carefully study the dress or mannerisms of a disliked group and go out of their way to avoid buying anything that might identify them with that group.
Burberry for example have struggled with their reputation since the media have portrayed Chavs to be seem head to toe in Burberry style clothing as before they were seem as a high class fashion brand.

In Britain today there is public debate suggesting that we are losing this essential sense of belonging and that globalization, for example is far from bringing people closer together it is actually moving us apart.
We hear that our neighbourhoods are becoming evermore impersonal and anonymous and that we no longer have a sense of place. On one level, belonging is certainly changing. While in the past a sense of belonging was more defined in terms of the traditional markers of social identity such as class or religion, people are now far more able to choose the categories to which they belong. We are now able to select from a wide range of groups, communities, brands and lifestyles those with which we wish to align ourselves and which, in turn, shape our social identities.
At the same time we may, or may not, remain rooted in our families or in the place in which we were born. We have much greater opportunity these days to opt in and opt out of various groups but we still want the same things from membership of these groups. We have timeless needs for social bonding, loyalty, security and acceptance. These have been with us since the Stone Age and throughout our history we have created social networks and groupings to serve these ends. So what does this landscape look like today? Is it that much different from that of the past?