The Human Tendency to go with the Flow of Life

Nowadays, individuality has been a blur to many because of a good number of factors such as social norms, pop culture, trends, and other influences. Every individual is affected and influenced by the society in one way or another Ateneans for example tend to stay away from things that would lead to them being classified as “jejemons” because such lifestyle is uncommon to our crowd. Almost the whole world hates Rebecca Black for her song entitled “Friday” and I haven’t heard of any group or anyone for that matter who is defending her. There is no law that states that only women can wear bras, but men don’t go out of the house wearing a bra underneath their shirts because it’s taboo. These kinds of actions or decision-making happens because people have the tendency to follow what is accepted because not doing so would lead to complications. By complications I mean people saying things about you, people judging you, and other things that would cause stress in life, which everyone would naturally want to avoid.
As discussed in class, there is such term as “groupthink”, which falls under the theories of groups and organizations. Groupthink doesn’t involve any fancy definitions to it. It simply means people agreeing or going with the flow of a certain something despite having better ideas in mind in order to give way for harmony. This kind of decision-making is not beneficial for the development and growth of the society because this leaves us stagnant since everyone is inclined to agree with the rest. Whereas if people voice out their ideas, there will be room for further improvement. Humans constantly come up with new innovative ideas and they lack confidence and will in letting their ideas be known to others.
Last week, my grandfather went through an operation that involved his heart being repaired by the use of an angioplasty stent. The decision to have him operated died not come in a snap of a finger. The decision was vital for my lolo’s life and it concerned the whole family. After the doctor announced what had to be done to my lolo, my whole family started murmuring in the hospital room. My mother being the only girl among five siblings called the attention of everyone and asked that everyone take part in voting whether they approved for my lolo’s operation or not. One by one, everyone started saying that they didn’t want to vote because it might cause tension in the family. So they ended up with a group decision and decided that my lolo be operated on. This story of mine shows how a group would usually come up with the same decision and agree with the rest of the group. This happens because in our case we all had the same concern for my lolo. The decision-making of groups are affected by different factors, some times it may be because cohesiveness is involved in the group or it may be because of external stressors. “Groupthink” does not always lead to bad decisions, at times a good decision may also spring about from such way of deciding on things.