Social conditioning

In You May Ask Yourself, Dalton Conley, a professor of sociology at New York University, states that "culture affects us.

In his work, he refers to Wilfred Trotter as the group conditions its members, Freud states "opposition to the herd is as good as separation from it, and is therefore anxiously avoided".

On a micro scale, the individual is conditioned to partake in the social norms of the said group even if they contradict his or her personal moral code.

[3] Out of fear of isolation and to secure the practice of instinctual impulses, there may be little protest from individual members as the group continues to conditions.

Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew and the father of propaganda and public relations, used many of his uncle's theories in order to create new methods in marketing.

In Propaganda, he published that "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it".

Bernays continued the application of his work as he associates the method in which a minority elite use social conditioning to assert their dominance and will power.

He states that the term "refers to a historical process in which a dominant group exercises 'moral and intellectual leadership' throughout society by winning the voluntary 'consent' of popular masses.

Stating "vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.

Wilbert E. Moore, a formal Princeton University Sociology professor, in Social Change, states that "the persistence of patterns gives order and constancy to recurrent events.

[2] Such cycling repetition creates a method of socialization and a manner in which society further molds its current members or new ones into the culture.

In Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas, the authors note that even illegal behaviors may be seen as positive and promoted within a particular group because different social organizations have a varying amount of influence over particular members – in particular, as children age, their friends play a greater amount of influence than the family.

The bulk of behavioral training which the child receives occurs at a time when the trainers, usually the parents, possess a very powerful system of reinforcement.

[2] Finally, individuals interact with the generalized other, "which represents an internalized sense of the total expectations of others in a variety of settings—regardless of whether we're encountered those people or places before".