Personal, Group and Societal Pressures

We all live by unspoken rules, which we follow because of the different types up pressures we feel. The main categories these pressures fall under are personal, group and societal.

Personal

We all have different personalities and these personalities come with certain "rules" we live by. I am going to use broad examples of personalities I have encountered in an attempt to make my point clear. I have met people with very high morals they have set for themselves, people that set high academic goals, people with high athletic goals, as well as people that just try to be as pleasing as possible. It can be argued that these standards these people have set are from the pressures they receive from around them, I would partially agree, but I would argue that they still had the choice and they chooses to set high standards to live by and push themselves farther than others with those same pressures push themselves. We all know those people that have set extremely high academic standards for themselves and when they fail, you can't reason with them and tell them that it's not the end of the world. But to them it is, they have pressured themselves into always doing well and they give themselves no excuses. People who are always trying to be pleasing amaze me the most, they have this pressure to make everyone happy, at the expense of their own happiness. These are examples of the extreme pressures some people put on themselves, But I believe everyone else pressures themselves to succeed and act a certain way. We all feel the need to please others, succeed in one way or another, and be happy with our actions. Through these needs we pressure ourselves to act in a certain way, not always in the extreme way as the previously mentioned examples, but in a way we can be happy with ourselves.

Group

While we were talking in class about how we feel the pressure to stand in line and not just cut ahead in front of everyone else I began to think about where we are feeling this pressure to stay in line. I believe this is an example of proximal group pressure, we are pressured by the people around us to act a certain way. During situations where dancing is an option, if no one is dancing we feel the pressure that we shouldn't dance, no one wants to be seen by a group of people out on a dance floor by themselves. But once the dance floor fills up, we also don't want to be the only one not dancing, because deep down we feel that everyone in the group is watching and talking about you. Of course we don't recieve pressure from people that are just in our proximity. We feel pressure from different groups all the time, family, friends, classmates, teammates..., the list goes on. We have to practice and succeed for out teammates, we have to act, dress, and speak a certain way to fit in with our friends and even our family, and we can't mess up in class, say a stupid answer or not partake in a group project. These pressures are from people we see and interact with.

Societal

These are the pressures we feel from places we don't see or interact with. Society tells us how to dress, what we should buy, what we should do, what we should watch, who we should like... and this list goes on and on. Everyone is impacted by these pressures, there are people who try and live outside of these pressures, but no one can completely escape these pressures. They surround us at all times. Society influences by the movies and shows that are produces, the commercials we watch and hear, as well as the products on the shelves when we shop. An example of how good adverising and societies pressure to be up on technology has influenced me, as well as the majority of college students, one word Macs. This generation has switched from a PC world to a Mac world, could this be due to the introduction of the ipod, the carfully placed apple as every cool character's computer in movies and television, those funnie commercials protraying to commputers as actual people, or is it actually the fact that a Mac is better than a PC. It is so easy to be sucked into the newesrt trend by societies pressures. I have been sucked in in the past and I will continue to be sucked in as the future aproaches (I'm only human).


I feel the pressure from all these different levels and I'm not ashamed to say that I use these pressures to influence my life. I believe in most cases it makes me a better person and it sure makes me an American ;).