psyche meets society: how society influences us.. — PinoyExchange

psyche meets society: how society influences us..

starfire28
starfire28 Member
in Realm of Thought #1
hello. i'm just a highschool student and i need some opinions about how society influences our decisions, beliefs, prejudices and such... i just need it for my term paper.

we conform. we deindividuate. but do we know why?

hope you can help me. thanks.
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Comments

  • blue[]ce
    blue[]ce Member
    #2
    gender roles. perfect example of how society influences us. from what we do to why we do it :)
  • hotchillipepper
    hotchillipepper Member
    #3
    maybe start with queries like this..how did early kings became the leaders of their society?


    not becuase of royal blood, dahhh!! :hmm: , they were the strongest, toughest, and smartest person in their own small community.

    hint: people do listen to someone who is successful!!
  • narutrix
    narutrix Pagla2kbaySmundoNgKawalan
    #4
    starfire28 wrote: »
    hello. i'm just a highschool student and i need some opinions about how society influences our decisions, beliefs, prejudices and such... i just need it for my term paper.

    we conform. we deindividuate. but do we know why?

    hope you can help me. thanks.

    we follow our parents teachings and traditions. when we are children, we adore them and somewhat helpless to stand on our own so we just follow our parents and our elderly. this is especially true to philippine society.
  • Lucca Yamazaki
    Lucca Yamazaki die boy abunda die!
    #5
    Hm

    Here's something you might wanna consider.

    If you throw a baby into a jungle where he gets raised by a clan of gorillas... will he be influenced by the gorillas as Burroughs would tell you or will some other weird thing happen.
  • micketymoc
    micketymoc Oversized Member
    #6
    I'm not knowledgeable enough on the topic to elaborate, but check out Steven Pinker's ideas on human nature. Listen to "The Blank Slate" interview here (scroll down). I was trying to find a PDF of the book (much, much more enlightening), but sorry, no dice.
  • MsEerie
    MsEerie Nothing
    #7
    society's concept of beauty is another example.
  • gekokujo
    gekokujo Original Fire
    #8
    try this one on your instructor: we conform…because we’re sick.
    More generally, rituals are usually performed with a sense of urgency, an intuition that great danger would be incurred by not performing them. These themes are also characteristic of obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD). As many anthropologists and psychologists have noted, the themes of ritual, as summarized above, and those of personal pathological obsessions are almost exactly similar. The particular emotional tenor of rituals might derive from their association with neural systems dedicated to the detection and avoidance of invisible hazards. Neuro-imaging studies of OCD patients generally show a significant increase of activity in cortical and limbic areas dedicated to the processing of danger signals. So the pathology might consist in a failure to inhibit or keep 'off-line' a set of normal neural reactions to potential sources of danger. We are still far from understanding to what extent this network is also involved in the production of "mild," controlled, socially transmitted notions about purity and the need for magical ritual. But it seems that the salience of a particular range of ritual themes to do with hidden danger and noxious contact and a susceptibility to derive rigid, emotionally vivid sequences of compulsory actions from such themes, may be spectacular cultural byproducts of neural function.

    Pascal Boyer: Why Is Religion Natural?, http://www.csicop.org
    example: green, yellow, red=ritual. society isn’t what happens when people are around other people. it’s when people don’t run a red light when there’s no one else around.
  • Ischaramoochie
    Ischaramoochie Moderator
    #9
    social contracts
  • starfire28
    starfire28 Member
    #10
    Lucca Yamazaki wrote: »
    Hm

    Here's something you might wanna consider.

    If you throw a baby into a jungle where he gets raised by a clan of gorillas... will he be influenced by the gorillas as Burroughs would tell you or will some other weird thing happen.

    edi... the baby will grow and act like a gorilla even though he's not a gorilla... coz he got influence by his interactions... db?
  • starfire28
    starfire28 Member
    #11
    gekokujo wrote: »

    example: green, yellow, red=ritual. society isn’t what happens when people are around other people. it’s when people don’t run a red light when there’s no one else around.

    wait.. this i dont get... people wont run a red ligh when theres no one around... so in reverse people run the redlight (do not conform) because theres people watching....?
    why to be seen and noticed?
  • starfire28
    starfire28 Member
    #12
    MsEerie wrote: »
    society's concept of beauty is another example.

    i was definitely gonna include this. =)
  • starfire28
    starfire28 Member
    #13
    another question...


    why do we feel like we NEED to conform?
  • micketymoc
    micketymoc Oversized Member
    #14
    Beauty, morals, status-seeking - are these things innate to us or are they learned?

    I think they're innate to some level - I mean, you don't learn to be attracted to the opposite sex. Some biological cues take charge.

    Any thoughts?
  • gekokujo
    gekokujo Original Fire
    #15
    starfire28 wrote: »
    wait.. this i dont get... people wont run a red ligh when theres no one around... so in reverse people run the redlight (do not conform) because theres people watching....?
    why to be seen and noticed?
    no, the reverse is when people do run a red light when no one’s watching. in the first place, why shouldn’t they? which came first, the red light or the traffic accident? no potential victims, no point to stopping for a red light. the driver who ignores the red light on an empty road is acting sensibly, the person who stops and politely waits for the signal to change is being abnormal.

    because it wasn’t the possibility of danger that made him stop, simply the red light itself. but why did the red light make him stop? because it’s illegal? – but there aren’t any cops or even witnesses around. yet the red light is stopping him as surely as Camp Big Falcon’s force field. how could a flashing light subdue a person’s will as if it were a physical barrier?

    red has become more than a color or inanimate object, it’s become a person: is the traffic light alive? is it aware of its purpose? does it notice the driver looking at it? – so why is the driver acting like he’s going to hurt the stoplight’s feelings if he snubs it?

    I think society did not get its start from the first man meeting the first woman - that’s not society, that’s biology – but rather, when man first looked-up at the sun, the moon, and the stars: the world’s first symbols.

    society is not people, it’s words, signs, objects: beauty, morals, status – a symbol is something that is nothing until someone says that it ought to be something else.

    nothing to something=change. but symbols have no power to act, only man can go from potency to action. reading is an act. but what of meaning?

    gulgabulgabulga - what does that word mean? nothing, reading it is a pointless act – no, gulgabulgabulga means something: nothing.

    we know it is not a word in the English language. we are familiar with the process of recognizing that something means nothing, and we will repeat that process next time around. nothing to something=>something means “nothing”<finding meaning=ritual.
    The particular emotional tenor of rituals might derive from their association with neural systems dedicated to the detection and avoidance of invisible hazards.
    why can’t gulgabulgabulga mean “the sum of two added to two”? why can’t we write “2+2=gulgabulgabulga”? – there, I just wrote it. have I added a new number to the list of numbers we know? – no, I am just being an idiot. but why can’t I be an idiot? – well, what does “idiot” mean? do you want to be an idiot? why don’t you? have you ever been an idiot in public? has your instructor ever given you grief for writing “2+2=gulgabulgagabulga”? have you ever called your instructor an idiot? why don’t you...?

    =instructors and other people can also become traffic lights.

    so why do we don’t do things even though we’ve actually never gotten into trouble for doing them since we haven’t done them? – a force field, an invisible barrier. but there is no force, only act. and we always act the same way, we will never be idiots. always never=ritual.

    beauty, morals, status=meaningless, simplistic, worthless. why do we default? why convention? why conform?
    But it seems that the salience of a particular range of ritual themes to do with hidden danger and noxious contact and a susceptibility to derive rigid, emotionally vivid sequences of compulsory actions from such themes, may be spectacular cultural byproducts of neural function.
    society is biology after all.

    …and that is what happens after one too many shots of Cuervo. happy birthday gulgabulgabulga. :lol:
  • gekokujo
    gekokujo Original Fire
    #16
    micketymoc wrote: »
    Beauty, morals, status-seeking - are these things innate to us or are they learned?
    they learn us.
  • MsEerie
    MsEerie Nothing
    #17
    starfire28 wrote: »
    another question...


    why do we feel like we NEED to conform?

    I think it's because of the herd mentality. Di ba a mob leaves reason behind and acts as one body?
  • MsEerie
    MsEerie Nothing
    #18
    micketymoc wrote: »
    Beauty, morals, status-seeking - are these things innate to us or are they learned?

    I think they're innate to some level - I mean, you don't learn to be attracted to the opposite sex. Some biological cues take charge.

    Any thoughts?

    I agree. Some are innate but there's also the environment. Parang nurture vs. nature.
  • hotchillipepper
    hotchillipepper Member
    #19
    1st- survival , economics and personal, there's always a competition.

    2nd- security and comfort

    3rd - pride and respect!
  • payter
    payter Banned by Admin
    #20
    atheists try to influence you
    by implying theyre smarter
    and that science is on their side
  • Lucca Yamazaki
    Lucca Yamazaki die boy abunda die!
    #21
    uhm......... NO U?
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