Mean Girls, 1984 and Social Conformity: A psychology student's reflection
By: @psychofart
My love for movies started young and has preceded my passion for psychology.I must confess, I learned a lot about social interaction through movies. Now that I’ve become a psychology students, I keep finding that my two passions relate once in a while. Here's how.
One of the earliest movies I recall watching is Mean Girls starring Lindsay Lohan. In themovie, Lohan plays the role of Kadie, an American girl who was born and raised in rural South Africa before moving back to the States and joining high school. She struggles to fit in and changes her attitudes and behavior to match a group of “mean girls” that she befriends shortly after joining the school. This movie fascinated me as a child because I thought it was funny how people changed their behavior just to feel included. At the time, I did not grasp what a wonderful commentary it was on conformist behavior.
Another much older work of fiction I believe addresses social conformity is the novel“1984” by George Orwell. The author published the book in 1949 and based the book around what he envisioned the future might look like in the year 1984. The books main protagonist Winston Smith lives in a dystopian era where the government or “Big Brother” dictates what to think, who to love or hate, what to do and so forth. The citizens obediently follow and have great faith in Big Brother’s choices for them. Smith experiences dissonance after falling in love with a girl with “blasphemous” beliefs against big brother and engages in secret rebellion. Yet in the end, after being caught, tortured for information and subsequently released, he convinces himself that he, in fact, admires Big Brother after all and gives into being part of the crowd.
Conformity refers to the act of changing one’s behavior to match the responses of others(Cialdini R.B., & Goldstein, N.J). The key feature highlighted in both these fictional works is that both protagonists base their identity through the collective and become conformists.
Research by MacDougall (1920) states that when individuals interact, they can form what can be described as “group think”. This can be seen in “mean girls” when despite how mean the antagonist, Regina George, was to people outside the “in-crowd”, the general student population saw Regina in a favorable light. One scene, in particular, shows a girl who says she was once punched in the face by Regina but claims “It was awesome”. Similarly, in “1984” the protagonist Smith describes how citizens of Oceania have a daily exercise where they watch propaganda videos depicting the national enemy “Emmanuel Goldstein”. While watching it, they boo,shout and get angry on behalf of Big Brother at Goldstein, someone they barely know. It is highly unlikely that either of these fictional individuals actually feel what they are outwardly expressing, whether it is hate for Goldstein or love for Regina and Big Brother. Our reactions to other people's beliefs depend on our perception of the level of consensus for these beliefs (Caldini and Goldstein). Simply put, if the individual, either Kadie towards Regina or Smith towards Big Brother, perceives a large support for an opinion they are likely to conform and vice-versa.
If I were to relate either of these fictional works to my reality, I wonder how many similarities I can find. We can all relate to Kadie on some level. Personally, I recall having a certain hairstyle in highschool, that definitely didn't look good on my curly hair, just because everyone else was doing it. Plus, it was “in”.
Next, a quick glance at Maldivian politics and you can observe what we call “hive mind”. If I must elaborate, there is the undeniable fact that Maldives was practically ruled by a dictator for 30 years. Evidence exists of abuse, prison torture and corruption yet many Maldivians still herald this dictator as their saviour. It's a funny coincidence that he is literally the “Big Brother” of our current president. When it comes to political ideas, Maldivians have faithfully, loyally, and blindly supported the colour they chose to belong to. Naturally, dissenting views are immediately dismissed as propaganda and lies so as to avoid inner conflict.
To further understand conformity, we must look at the phenomenon known as “behavioral mimicry”. The term refers to “behavior matching of postures, facial expressions, vocal characteristics, and mannerisms that occurs between two or more individuals.” (Chartrand & Bargh 1999; as cited by Cialdini R.B., & Goldstein, N.J). Back to Mean Girls, this phenomenon is first seen when Kadie completely changes how she dresses, talks, walks, interacts etc to match those of Regina. Second, when Kadie secretly cuts two holes in the breast area of Regina’s shirt. Regina confidently wears it anyway, resulting in all the other female students to come to school wearing shirts with holes in the chest the following day.
While both of these fictional works could be criticized as exaggerated depictions of human behavior for the sake of entertainment, there is an underlying truth to the behavior depicted. In the famous experiment by Asch, 75% of participants conformed to the majority view at least once, and gave an incorrect answer (as cited by Mcleod, S.) Afterwards, when participants were asked why they conformed, they replied that even though they did not agree with the majority view, they feared being ridiculed (normative influence) or they doubted themselves, believing that the majority would know better than the individual (informational influence). Therefore, it can be concluded that regardless of the exaggerated behavior depicted in the aforementioned works of fiction, they hit right on the mark when portraying social conformity.
References
Cialdini R.B., & Goldstein, N.J.,(N.D.), SOCIAL INFLUENCE: Compliance and Conformity Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2004. 55:591–621 doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.142015