Social pressures lead people to make decisions they would otherwise never have made....

Social pressures lead people to make decisions they would otherwise never have made
By
Ahsan Z. Farooqui

Man is social by nature. He lives in society of other people; this society plays a very pivotal role in his actions, activities and overall personality. Society plays such a vital role in one’s life that social pressures force one to do things and make decisions he would otherwise never make. Social pressures lie in two main categories active or direct social pressures and passive or indirect pressures.

Direct pressures include persuasion from people, or influence through peers and other people. Take habit forming acts such as taking drugs, gambling, drinking and chiefly smoking. When inquired from people who are indulged in these acts most of them revealed that different social pressures forced them to do so. In his book “Relapse and Addictive Behavior” by author Michael Gossop he has mentioned that a survey including 64 smokers was carried out. The survey revealed that 37 percent of the smokers got into this addiction against their will and because of social pressure. These social pressure included persuasion from people who smoke, from peers and because people at their home smoked. When talking about society friends come first in the hierarchy of one’s social circle. Sometimes pressure from them indulges one into acts which are done against one’s will. This kind of direct social pressure is called peer pressure. For instance a person has a group of friends who plan to steal something. As a part of the group even he does not wishes to steal he will be coerced into the act of theft. This is because of peer persuasion or the fear of being left out from the whole group. Peer pressure also plays a vital role at schools where students are forced to do things just because other friends have forced them to do so. Class bunking, cheating, stealing are all included in this juvenile delinquency driven by peer pressure. But peer pressure does not have all bad facets. At times it has helped weaker students to perform well because they were encouraged and guided by their friends to work well.

Passive or indirect social pressures also sometimes forces people to do things in opposition to their will. Indirect pressures unlike direct ones are somewhat not that much visible but still they effect people’s decision making and their acts. In recent years researches have shown that the act of suicide is driven by indirect social pressures. In the society where there is an accelerating inflation, unemployed cannot withstand its pressure and hence are unwillingly forced into committing such a deed. Students who fail in the board exam give up their lives because they cannot withstand the embarrassment of not getting into a good institution. In these cases certainly people did not force them to commit suicide but the indirect pressure from society, their family to get employment and to perform well in studies heaped that much that unwillingly they have to give up their lives.
Some people also argue that social pressures to direct personal decision making are acceptable because these social pressures tend to work for the interest of individuals. This forms the basis of collectivism. Collectivism as described by Stephen Grabill and Gregory M. A. Gronbacher is a group or society which works for political, economic and social interests of individuals so that they have to give up their personal decisions to interest and decisions taken by society for them. These kinds of pressures are mainly seen during the formation of a representative body called government, where the society as a whole chooses the leader and each individual then has to accept the leader irrespective of their personal choice. The government formed by that leader than work for the interest of the people living in the society and forces them to obey laws and regulations set by the government bodies. But sometimes the society starts to pressurize and force people to obey the laws that much that it turns into Statism. Statism as defined by Rick Gabor a form of social pressure or collectivism where individuals are forcefully dictated by the government to obeys laws against their will.
However there is a group of people who argue against these actions driven by social pressures. They are of the view that if a society is urging a man to do something wrong he should aloof from society. This negation of society and its pressures give rise to the theology of individualism. The idea of individualism gives all powers of decision making to individuals and thus it states that individuals themselves have the sole responsibility of taking decisions. They have formed their ideology on the basis of the maxim “I am because I can think”. They are of the view that man is not amoral by nature. He can certainly discriminate right from wrong. He can certainly withstand any social pressure through his power of thinking and intellect. If great inventors such as Thomas Edison, Graham Bell and many others had not defied social pressures by going against the existing knowledge and discovering electricity and inventing means of communication then world would have been still dwelling in the realms of darkness. Thus these people advocate that through determination and by discriminating right from wrong one could withstand any social pressure and people who commit bad deeds cannot blame society rather they are hiding their crime at the back of this notion of social pressures.
However, this individualism withdraws its followers from social life into the world of their own which is more of a utopia than realism. The realistic approach is that man is social by nature. He has to live in the society and there are pressures from society. These pressures can be direct or indirect, their effect can be good or bad but they do force the individuals to change their own viewpoint and decisions and forcefully act upon what society urges them to do as C.M Ward said

"There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint." — Ward, C. M.
(The author is a student at Lahore University of Management Sciences of batch 2012)

Works Cited
Gossop, Michael. Relapse and Addictive Behavior. Routledge, 1989.