Conformity and gender

Conformity and gender

Literature review

Gender refers to a set to roles that people are be construed towards within human society. Thus one can be considered either male or female. Social conformity refers to giving in to social pressure to fit into society. Most often than not, people’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are influenced by their gender group’s son that they can be accepted. Failure to conform to what is considered acceptable often attracts ridicule and embarrassment with an aim to force the person to confirm. Various past studies have shown just how gender influence affects social beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of people.

Oosten, Vandenbosch, and Peter investigated a group of 1,467 adolescents in the Netherlands to determine if gender affected their social networking behaviors. The survey was built on a previous study that claimed that gender roles directly affected how males and females perceived themselves and how they presented themselves on social media networks. The participants in the survey were required to support and align themselves with the hyper-masculinity of hyper-femininity. Afterward, the participant’s gender alignment measured whether it caused them to engage in hyper-sexualized depictions on social media or not. The study was conducted in three waves with an interval period of six months. The findings of the study were that adolescents who supported and perceived hyper gender orientation positively were more likely to conform to the behavior on social media. However, there were no variations in behavior between males and females.

Reed et al. investigated the effects of gender stereotypes on adolescents’ dating beliefs and behaviors. The predictors used in the study were digital abusive behavior, which meant pressuring, threatening or coercing, monitoring, and manipulating a dating partner. The study enlisted 703 adolescents who had dated previously, and using a structural equation model surveyed how stereotypical gender roles influenced their conformity behavior in carrying out harmful digital behaviors. The survey found out that girls were more likely to carry out digitally abusive behavior against their partners, while boys greatly endorsed behaviors carried out by their fellow males against their female dating partners. The study identified that girls were more likely to believe that monitoring and control behaviors were appropriate against their partners, while the boys were more aligned with aggressive and hostile behaviors. Reed et al. concluded that gender stereotypes played a significant role in influencing boys and girls to conform to the problematic use of digital tools in relationships.

Duncan, Aguilar, and Magnusson carried out a study to investigate how gender influenced heteronormative attitudes among undergraduate students. The study was conducted in Mountain West College, where the researchers targeted 524 students between aged between 18 and 24 years. The participants were asked in an online survey if they agreed with heteronormative attitudes and situations. The three tests used measured gender conformity using a TMF, endorsement of heteronormative behavior, and the tolerance of open depiction of the behavior on a Likert scale. The survey indicated a low endorsement of heteronormative attitudes and majorities were against the conformity towards abusive behavior against members of the same-sex community. The study depicted that conformity towards traditional views against the outside data sets was changing from strict traditional perspectives towards general acceptance.

Monge-Rojas et al. investigated how gender influenced food consumption habits among Costa Rican adolescents. The study was a qualitative study that was conducted in San Jose, a rural area with a diverse population in Costa Rica. The targeted sample consisted of 92 adolescents between the age of 14 and 17, as well as a group of 48 parents and guardians. The study used a focus group discussion method of data collection. The study findings showed that low consumption of food was linked to femininity and homosexuality, while high consumption of food was linked to masculinity and heterosexuality. The general perception was that heterogeneous ate heavy amounts of food in order to keep their energy levels up. In terms of body image, weight control measures were associated with femininity but not masculinity. The study depicted how gender stereotypes influenced basic things such as food consumption and body images.

Sara et al. investigated teenagers perceived problematic digital posts online. The researcher aimed to determine whether gender affected the way teenagers disclosed information about a mistake they had made through an online post. The researcher sampled 780 online posts.50% of the posts were posted by men, while women posted 50 %. The differences between the way men and women disclosed their mistakes about the online posts. The research findings portrayed that men were more likely to admit instances of wrongdoing when compared to women, despite the two groups facing the same levels of victimization.

The hypothesis

The current study hypothesis examined the effects of gender and comment priming on the social conformity of individuals. In the study, the independent variables are gender and content priming. The dependent variable for the study is social conformity. When it comes to comment priming, we predict that the participants with the mixed consensus condition will be more than those in the supportive condition towards the student’s behavior. When it comes to gender, we predict that the female participants will conform more towards feminine behaviors than how males will conform towards masculinity. Also, we predict that participants who are in the mixed condition and are male will have a higher effect on conformity than participants who will either support or oppose and are of the male gender. This means that any other participants who will be either male and in supportive and female and in opposing conditions will be aligned in between.