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My parents are always telling me not to give in to peer pressure and not to just follow the crowd. If I hear them say one more time, "If one of your friends jumped off a bridge would you jump too?" I am going to scream! Isn't it OK to go along with your friends some of the time?
Peer
pressure is not all bad, in fact it is essential to
proper social development that we do learn to "follow
the crowd". This is how we learn acceptable social
norms; that is, how we are expected to act in the world in
order to be good people. The trick is learning to tell the
difference between between following the crowd and blindly
following the crowd. It takes a person of great character and
self confidence to work peer pressure the right way!
The difference between good peer pressure and bad peer
pressure can be summed up with a simple comparison - when it
is good, you are a member of the crowd; when it is bad, you
are part of a mob. If peer pressure is telling you to do
something without questioning why, to do something you know
is wrong, or to do something you feel uncomfortable doing it
is safe to say this is bad. This is the kind
of behaviour that leads to a "mob mentality", that
is when the group is acting as one and no one seems to be
thinking about consequences or outcomes. NOT COOL! If peer
pressure is telling you to act in a generally appropriate
way, to do the right thing when you may not otherwise, or to
do more good than harm it is safe to say this is good.
As long as following the crowd doesn't cause you to act
without consideration, following is not always a bad thing to
do. In a situation where peer pressure is good, individuals
in the groups will be acting as individual parts of a whole,
each working WITH the other. A good rule is this; if
it makes you feel bad it IS bad for you!
A good example of positive peer pressure is test
writing. Testing situtations have many rules and lots of
pressure to do well. Combine this with the reality that tests
are not easy for everyone, that some people will do better
than others, that some people may try to cheat, and that
others may not care about the test at all - and you have a
recipe for chaos. Yet, somhow, most testing situations go
smoothly. Kids don't generally do the test as a group and
they rarely break the rules of being quiet and "eyes on
your own paper". Even the kids who may finish early or
who don't care about the test much tend to obey the basic
rules. Why? Peer pressure! Sure, there are punishments for
breaking the rules, but academic punishments generally aren't
big deterrants. The real reason that everything works is that
the kids who don't care don't want to deal with the feelings
of those who do care if they do something to disrupt the test.
Peer pressure is causing people to "tow the line"
in a situation where they have little or no other incentive
to do so.
So, to answer your question, YES it is OK to
"follow the crowd" from time to time. In
fact it is essential that you do! What you need to do is
learn to recognize when following the crowd is doing more
harm - either to you or others - than it is doing good. But,
if you find that you can't stand up for your beliefs or are
losing the ability to judge right and wrong on anything but
the opinions of others in your group, you may have a problem.
You must NEVER let "following the crowd" take
precedence over "following your conscience". Know
yourself and be true to your inner guide and you will be
fine!
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