What is categorized as “peer pressure” here? Explicit threats to report you to authorities if you don’t conform? I’m guessing not. But how about implicit threats? What if you’ve heard (or read in the news) stories about people who don’t conform—in ways moderately but not hugely more extreme than you—having their careers ruined? In any situation that you could call “peer pressure”, I imagine there’s always at least the possibility of some level of social exclusion.
The defining questions for that aspect would appear to be “Do you believe that you would face serious risk of punishment for not conforming?” and “Would a reasonable person in your situation believe the same?”. Which don’t necessarily have the same answer. It might, indeed, be that people whom you observe to be “conformist” are the ones who are oversensitive to the risk of social exclusion.
We call it “peer pressure” when it is constraining the individual (or at least some of them) without providing perceived mutual value. It is the same mechanism that leads to people collaborating for the common good. The interesting question is which forces or which environments lead to a negative sum game.
What is categorized as “peer pressure” here? Explicit threats to report you to authorities if you don’t conform? I’m guessing not. But how about implicit threats? What if you’ve heard (or read in the news) stories about people who don’t conform—in ways moderately but not hugely more extreme than you—having their careers ruined? In any situation that you could call “peer pressure”, I imagine there’s always at least the possibility of some level of social exclusion.
The defining questions for that aspect would appear to be “Do you believe that you would face serious risk of punishment for not conforming?” and “Would a reasonable person in your situation believe the same?”. Which don’t necessarily have the same answer. It might, indeed, be that people whom you observe to be “conformist” are the ones who are oversensitive to the risk of social exclusion.
We call it “peer pressure” when it is constraining the individual (or at least some of them) without providing perceived mutual value. It is the same mechanism that leads to people collaborating for the common good. The interesting question is which forces or which environments lead to a negative sum game.