THE PERNICIOUS POWER OF PEER PRESSURE
by Adam Harbinson
What is it about peer pressure that can make people act totally out of character, makes them behave in a way they never ordinarily would? Is it peer pressure that makes people endure cruelty that none has the right to inflict, like in an abusive marriage or a bad church? Why do people stay when they’re free to walk out the door? Why doesn’t the battered wife leave the instant her bullying husband verbally abuses or lifts a fist? Could it be because her environment, her peers have conditioned her to believe this is normal?
Before I published my last book about spiritual abuse – the unacceptable face of religion – I had a meeting with a publisher who was interested in the manuscript. We worked our way through the text and were discussing some of the situations I was writing about. He picked up on one; I had allowed myself to believe that if I rejected the authority of the church elders I was also rejecting the authority of God; rebelling against God’s kingdom with disastrous consequences.
The publisher’s name was Sean, he looked like an overgrown leprechaun with an impish expression, a bald head and a little tuft of beard of his chin. Sean screwed up his face, scratched his head and asked me what age I was at the time. I think he hoped I would tell him I was about twelve, but I wasn’t.
‘In my forties,’ I bleated.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph man,’ says he, ‘was there something wrong with yer head?’ And there have been times when I’ve asked myself the same question. But no, it was a clever use of the pernicious power of peer pressure. Everybody else seemed to be happy and it’s not easy to break rank.
I studied psychology at university, and I was struck by a piece of research that was done at the University of Chicago that demonstrated how peer pressure can dictate a person’s behaviour. Fifteen students sat in a room undergoing a test, mostly simple arithmetic. Only one of the fifteen didn’t know it was a psychological study, a set-up, and all went well until they came to the trick question; multiply nine by nine.
These were well educated people. They all knew the answer was eighty-one, but fourteen of them had been prompted to give the wrong answer. They all said eighty-two, and the one who didn’t know he was part of a psychological study also said eighty-two. Why did he do that?
The most basic human need after food, shelter and clothing is acceptance. None of us likes to be the odd man out. Michael Jackson is on a photo-shoot and he leaves a strand of hair hanging over his face. Next day everybody has a strand of hair hanging over their faces. David Beckham doesn’t tuck in his shirt properly one morning, and before you know it every kid in the world has half of his shirt-tail hanging out. It’s ‘cool’, it’s the power of peer pressure, it’s what the story, ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’ is all about. It’s irrational, destructive and very difficult to resist, but it can be overcome.
It’s irrational because it makes people say eighty-two when they know it’s eighty-one. It’s destructive because the obsession to be like everybody else turns you into an imitation who may never know what it’s like to be yourself. And it’s difficult to overcome, but you can by knowing that you are no accident. You’re no mistake. You’re unique because God made you that way. He loves you as you are, and let nobody tell you any different.
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