Conforming in a group

On the 22nd of March 2008, the SATURDAY newspaper ran an 8 page article about teenage girls being declared Beyond Parental Control by their parents. This meant that their parents felt that they cannot control them and needed the court’s assistance. Typically, these girls joined gangs, took drugs, smoked cigarettes (even though they’re underage), have sex casually, self mutilate etc.

These behaviors can endanger their lives. From my experience during secondary school times, policemen would come to my school to give talks about joining gangs. They would show gory pictures of what happens after a fight and warn us about the problems we might get into. Teachers would emphasise on how we should resist peer pressure when we’re asked to do things that are not socially acceptable. We would be given brochures and taught about the harmful effects of drugs, cigarettes and casual sex. Even as we watch television, read the papers or even walk about the streets, we can see advertisements warning about the dangers of smoking, drugs, casual sex or joining gangs. These information should make us feel fearful about performing socially undesirable acts. However, as reported in the article, the number of girls arrested and being declared out of control by their parents have increased. Besides, there may be many more such cases which have not been reported or brought to the attention of the authorities.

So why do these girls engage in those activities? Why do they join gangs and get into fights? Why take part in activities that can cause harm to their lives? Unlike animals or our ancestors who needed to fight for survival reasons, these girls fight over issues like territory, boyfriends, or staring incidents. These are not essential for them to survive. In the report, a girl reported sniffing glue until she passed out. Shouldn’t this frighten her and stop her from sniffing glue again? Pictures of blackened lungs on cigarette packets and information about how drugs can kill or get them into trouble with the law should scare them shouldn’t they? Knowing about sexually transmitted diseases or the risk of getting pregnant at a young age should make them afraid of having casual sex shouldn’t it?

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A critical factor, norm of reciprocity, which was proposed by Cialdini and his colleagues, stated that if we have a favor done to us, we should reciprocate. The free-gift technique is a way of increasing compliance by giving somebody a small gift before requesting something from them. These gangs use the free-gift techniques to make the girls comply with them.

As stated in the article, some of them were treated like important people by the gang members who give them treats. Their friends in the gang would celebrate their birthdays with them and provide them with promise them friendship. As they have not been treated well unconditionally before, these were like free gifts to the girls. In return, these girls reciprocate by joining the gangs and help them peddle drugs and illegal DVDs.

The girls would get into fights, have sparring sessions, take drugs, smoke, have casual sex, or dress similarly. They even spot similar tattoos on the same area of their body. It is a behavior that they engage in as a group and the girls would conform. Why do they conform? There are two reasons. Informational influence occurs because they are influenced by others in the gang. They do not know what to do and the other more experienced gang members seem to be more knowledgeable and doing the correct thing. Normative influence occurs when they perform the behavior either with or without thinking the others have done is correct in order to gain rewards or avoid punishment. Therefore, in desiring to be correct in the group and obtain recognition and approval from the other members, they conform. Besides, it a social norm within the group to dress similarly and have similar tattoos.

In the article, it stated that the parents of the girls were sometimes too busy with work to spend time with them. One of the girl said that when she wanted to talk to her mother, she was always not there. This loneliness and rejection lowers their self esteem. As people are usually motivated to strive for high self esteem, they seek friends and approval elsewhere. Apart from conforming with the group, when they fight well and win, sell more drugs or manage to steal something, they get praises from the gang. This increases their self-esteem and makes them feel that they are worthy.

Will simply telling teenage girls about the dangers prevent them from joining gangs? Instead of using fear to prevent them from breaking the law, why not do as the gangs do and let them form groups that engage in healthy or “cool” but legal activities? For example, teachers in schools can celebrate birthdays every month for students with birthdays in that particular month to allow them to feel a sense of belonging. Instead of only punishing them when they have done something wrong, why not praise them too when they’ve corrected a mistake or achieved a goal? This may increase their self-esteem and might prevent them from joining gangs to obtain that. We can also allow them to form groups to do fun activities like playing music or art instead of smoking or taking drugs to release stress.

It seems that not only do the teenage girls require education and guidance. Parents too, need to be informed of how they can affect the lives of their children. Messages about the harmful effects of drugs and smoking are everywhere but is there anyone around to educate their parents? If we can prevent the girls from committing mistakes, why not? Why wait till they’ve done something damaging and harmful to their lives before realizing that you’ve no ability to control them anymore.

Schema in the park

Schemas are mental representation of objects or categories of objects. It contains the obvious features of the object or category and assumption on how it would work. To decide how to behave in a situation, we go through an automatic process of categorization of things to establish meanings and predicting how they will work using schemas.

When we go through this process of categorizing something, we assume that it owns the characteristics of the schema although the characteristics cannot be perceived directly. This simplifying act of assumption allows us to make decisions quickly and it is essential in order for us to cope in this complex environment. It would be impossible and extremely time consuming if we had to deliberate over every detail to ensure accuracy in all situations and objects that we should encounter.

When making sense of an object, the schema we use to categorize it can influence what would be noticed. Schemas also have an impact on how we interpret ambiguous information. Ambiguous information are interpreted according to the schemas. Ambiguous actions may may lead us to have the assumption that the object has certain characteristics, and anything that suggest those characteristics may be interpreted that our assumptions are correct.

Last Saturday, my friend and I, who did not know that a park could exist in Chinatown, got curious and went for a stroll in Pearl’s hill city park. It was a quiet park with many trees and very few people. Near the top of the park, was a fitness corner for people to exercise. We saw a man. When my friend noticed and informed me that he was behaving oddly and smiling at me, we started walking away quickly. Nearing the exit of the park, we saw him again. He was ahead of us and seemed to be leaving the park. Suddenly, he turned and started walking towards us. We got frightened and were wondering what to do when he said “How are you?” in chinese. It got us really scared and we started walking quickly to get out. As we walked past him quickly, he seemed to approach us. But we were mistaken. He was greeting a man behind us.

The situation was not clear. He did not have a label on his clothes that said pervert or robber but we assumed it to be. This could be due to information from the media and from hearsay about perverts or robbers lurking about quiet parks, and with that being the most available information at that time, we formed a schema of a pervert or robber of the man.

The environment of the park being quiet, him walking towards us, and greeting, further increased the information we had to categorize and impose the idea that he wasn’t a good person and would do something bad. His simple act of smiling and greeting matched the schema of how some perverts (as we have seen in the news) behave, made us assume that it was evidence that we are correct and should run away quickly.

However, we were wrong, and this showed that the assumptions we made were inaccurate and we do not always categorize objects accurately. The schema we had caused us to form a stereotype of men who behave friendly in a quiet park as a bad person. If an incident were to happen in the park on the similar day, we would have assumed it was the man we saw was the perpetrator and he might be wrongly caught as a suspect due to the schema we had of him.

Although errors can be made, schemas can also be useful. As it was a situation where we were unsure of the circumstances, we formed the schema using the most available information of the situation (what we have seen in the media). It was automatic. We did not control our thoughts and think carefully if we should walk away quickly or not. This categorization allowed us to decide to move away quickly and if we were correct, this schema that we invoked would have saved us.

I would like to think that if such a friendly act was to be done at a party, we would react in a completely different way. As a party would provide us with a completely different schema of the man.