Social media has recently become the most popular means of communication used by millions of people, especially young adults. However, social media utilizes the incentive to alter the landscape of how we connect with each other by manipulating the data of our previous behaviors to shape our current and future conformity. Social media can achieve information social influence and normative social influence on individuals to change their behaviors unconsciously. Social conformity affects personal decision-making and behaviors by creating injunctive and descriptive social norms.
Informational social influences individual behaviors to conform to society’s standards. As social context changes, fellow group members in a social network challenge individual to ‘self-regulation’ or ‘self-policing’ (Aronson et al., 2021). During the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been massive awareness of the preventive measures the public should adopt and the detrimental impacts of the disease. Maintaining social distancing and regular washing of hands were some precautionary social behaviors that normatively altered my behaviors. My perception of how others abide by social distancing and sanitization unconsciously changed my behaviors positively. In compliance with Covid-19 safety regulations, the society set expectations on hand sanitation and developed a ‘let’s not get together’ attitude. My behaviors unconsciously changed as I coordinated with social life. Social distancing and hand washing became standard behavior. Informational social influenced my behaviors positively to avoid Covid-19 infections.
Social norms can either be injunctive norms or descriptive norms. Injunctive norms reflect on behaviors approved or disapproved by society’s perceptions to determine tolerable social behaviors, whereas descriptive norms refer to what we perceive about how most people in a group behave (Aronson et al., 2021). Drinking behaviors among college students have a different injunctive norm compared to the descriptive norm. It is an injunctive norm that college students are still underage and should not drink alcohol. However, the high prevalence of college students who drink alcohol set a different descriptive norm. The injunctive norm negatively associates college drinking behavior, unlike the descriptive norm with a reference group positively associated with drinking. The injunctive norm in this case falsely predicts the drinking behaviors of college students since the students have a different conceptualization forged by the descriptive norm. People are therefore more likely to conform to the descriptive norm since it represents conformity to what is adaptive and effective, unlike injunctive norms that only promote social sanctions.
Conformity influences social behavior because prevailing perceptions in the group they belong to or the group they admire affecting their beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and actions. According to Aronson et al. (2021), mutual social influence creates norms by sharing and communicating perceptions hence influencing private responses. Therefore, a common belief is created in a society or a group of people. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) predicts future behaviors by assessing the immediate beliefs in three constituents: attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. The exchange of perceptions shapes the attitudes towards behavior to create subjective norms through conformity. For example, people’s attitudes towards certain goods and behaviors are influenced by the belief they develop after assessing the products’ reviews. The perceived behavioral control is the personal perception to conform their behaviors to the social norms.
Social media is the latest model of social exchange using public data to manipulate current and future behaviors. Information and normative social influence are the kinds of behavior-changing influences achieved through social media. Information social influence influenced my personal behaviors to conform to the ‘new norms’ during the Covid-19 pandemic. Injunctive norms create consensual standards that guide how people should act and behave, whereas descriptive norms relate to how a group should act and behave to fit in. People are more likely to observe descriptive norms rather than injunctive norms. The TPB ideas demonstrate how conformity affects the behavioral route to attitude formation and change.
Reference
Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Sommers, S. R. (2021). Social psychology. Pearson Education India. (10th Edition). Web.