Nonconforming Behavior Research Articles

Herding, social preferences and (non-)conformity

We study the role of social preferences and conformity in explaining herding behavior in anonymous risky environments. In an experiment similar to information cascade settings, but with no private information, we find no evidence for conformity. On the contrary, we observe a significant amount of non-conforming behavior, which cannot be attributed to errors.

Assessing Power and Control Differentials

ABSTRACT A critique of unidirectional understandings of power and control in social psychology, conflict theory, critical theory, and social work empowerment theories provides the framework for a new synthetic conceptualization of power and control in human behavior. A criminological theory called control balance is enlarged as an explanation of non-conforming behavior. Both a surplus of autonomy and an excess of repression provide subjective motivation for subversive acts that empower the actor. This dual-tension model is a theoretically useful predictor of human behavior, and in concert with symbolic interactionism, provides a theoretical frame for consideration of secondary socialization as a potential means of Social Work intervention

The impact of gender-role nonconforming behavior, bullying, and social support on suicidality among gay male youth

This study hypothesized that gender-role nonconformity is associated with suicidality, and bullying mediates this relationship. Gay males retrospectively answered questions pertaining to elementary, middle, and high school. Support for the hypotheses was found. Results can help screen gay youth for suicidality and support the need for policies prohibiting harassment based on sexual orientation.

From migrant enclaves to mainstream: Reconceptualizing informal economic behavior

The “informal economy” has developed in sociological theory to refer to clusters of illegal or quasi-illegal activities, usually unreported, by which people in some immigrant or ethnic communities earn income outside regular businesses and jobs. This article first extrapolates a set of characteristics beyond the legal status of such activities that define the “informal economy.” These provide a richer framework for future research and the basis for identifying informal economic activity in other sectors of the legitimate mainstream economy. In fact, informalization seems to have gone from marginal activities to a mainstream movement to make large sectors more fluid, network-based, and less regulated—the informalized economy. Its characteristics are identified. They overlap with the first set but differ principally in terms of extending Merton's proposition that different social structures exert different pressures to engage in non-conforming behavior. The article concludes with policy implications for fostering greater entrepreneurship in marginal migrant communities, and it suggests new ways for economic sociologists to study network transactions in modern corporations of informal economic activity through generative sociology.

The Pattern, Causes And Management of Student Non-Conforming Behaviour in Nigerian Secondary Schools

The study examined the pattern and causes of non-conforming behaviours of students of secondary schools in Nigeria, as perceived by teachers. It also researched into the management of these behaviour by the teachers. Two hundred and forty secondary school teachers drawn from the four divisions of Ogun State, Nigeria took part in the study. The findings revealed that the prevalent non-conforming behaviour of the students are: lateness, disobeying rules, insulting fellow students, leaving school before time, using abusive language, absenteeism, stealing, quarrelling, disrupting classes, cheating in examinations and tests, leaving school without permission, aggressiveness, fighting and bullying. These behaviours are caused by the students intelligent, society, peer group, age of students, the home, curriculum and location of school. Among the techniques used by teachers to manage these behaviours are: warning, private talk, sending to principal, recording of behaviours, consulting parents, giving extra home-work, isolating the students and involving students in school administration. IFE PsychologIA Vol 9, No 2 September 2001, pp. 100-112

Pregnant adolescents: experiences and behaviors associated with physical assault by an intimate partner.

To better understand the experiences and behaviors of battered pregnant adolescents and the characteristics of their intimate partners. As part of a longitudinal multiracial/ethnic study of drug use among pregnant and parenting adolescents, 724 adolescents < or = 18 years of age completed face-to-face interviews on the postpartum unit between April 1994 and February 1996. Adolescent mothers reported on demographic characteristics, social support and peer contact, level of substance use before and during pregnancy, nonconforming behaviors, and both lifetime and concurrent exposure to violence. Information about the father of her baby included his level of substance use, gang and police involvement, and intimate partner violence. Chi-square and Student's t tests were used to identify victim, partner, and relationship characteristics associated with being assaulted by the father of her baby during the preceding year. Eighty-six (11.9%) adolescents reported being physically assaulted by the fathers of their babies. Assaulted adolescents were significantly more likely than nonassaulted adolescents to have been exposed to other forms of violence over the same 12-month period, including verbal abuse, assault by family members, being in a fight where someone was badly hurt, reporting fear of being hurt by other teens, witnessing violence perpetrated on others, and carrying a weapon for protection. A history of nonconforming behavior and frequent or recent substance use was more common among both battered adolescents and their perpetrator partners. The age and race/ethnicity of the pregnant adolescent and the length of her relationship with the father of her baby were not associated with assault status. Pregnant adolescents who are assaulted by intimate partners appear to live in violence-prone environments and to have partners who engage in substance use and other nonconforming behaviors. Comprehensive assessments are critical for all adolescent females at risk of assault, and direct questions about specific behaviors or situations must be used.

Medicine and Gender Dysphoria: A Brief Overview

Medicine has long been concerned with nonconforming sexual and gender behavior, but how this was defined depended, in large part, on the treatment modalities that existed at any given time. This meant that descriptions of the behavior were also culturally influenced, which means that it is difficult for later generations to understand the exact behavior. When medical professionals began to look more intensely at variant behaviors in the 19th century, they did so in terms of sex, and it was not until the last part of the 20th century that gender dysphoria emerged as a separate diagnostic category. Much of the progress in understanding gender dysphoria is due to the willingness of professionals to take a new look at their client populations, taking into account the expertise such groups have acquired. There is still much to be learned, by all concerned, about gender dysphoria.

Deviation from Corresponding States for a Fluid of Square Well Spherocylinders

The nonconformal behavior of a fluid of hard spherocylinders with a spherocylindrical square well attraction is examined using a simple perturbation theory in which the thermodynamics of the anisot...

Factor Analysis of an Afrikaans Translation of the Comrey Personality Scales

The factorial validity of an Afrikaans translation of the Comrey Personality Scales, was investigated using a sample of 804 South African university students. Nine factors were extracted and rotated. Eight of the factors were clearly recognisable as the eight factors that comprise Comrey's 1970 taxonomy of personality traits. Coefficients of congruence indicated that seven of the factors were very similar to the factors obtained in the American normative sample. Loadings for The Social Conformity factor were not as high as expected, but this may have been due to the fact that the participants were nonvolunteers who may have been hesitant to reveal nonconforming attitudes and behaviors. These results lend additional support for the factorial validity of the traits in Comrey's taxonomy which have now been identified and replicated in several countries and languages.

Early Initiation of Sexual Intercourse: The Influence of Psychosocial Unconventionality

Longitudinal data were used to examine the relationship of psychosocial unconventionality—rejection of societal norms and a propensity to engage in nonconforming behavior—to early initiation of sexual intercourse in an urban sample of 1,330 White, Hispanic, and African-American male and female middle-school and high-school students. Measures of unconventionality were taken from the social-psychological framework of Problem-Behavior Theory. Analysis of variance and Cox proportional hazard regression analysis were used to test the linkage of these measures to earlier initiation of intercourse. The model fit the data well for White and Hispanic youths; greater prior unconventionality was associated longitudinally with earlier transition to nonvirginity. The model was less appropriate for African-American adolescents. Reasons for these group differences are discussed.

The theory of social control: Does it apply to the very young?

This article reports the findings of a replication study of social control theory that used fifth grade students. This sample was the youngest used to test this theory. All four elements of the bond (belief, involvement, commitment, and attachment) were measured with individual items from the Richmond Youth Project and more recent tests of the theory. Outcome measures included both illegal and non-conforming behavior. In general, the social control model was unable to distinguish deliquency very well. Some differences were observed when the model was applied independently to male, female, white, and black youths. Two elements of the theory—attachment and commitment—were most important to the explanation of nonconformity. Belief was significant in several models, but in the opposite direction of that predicted by the theory. These results suggest that the elements of the bond work differently for pre-teens than for their older counterparts. These results also add to the mounting evidence that greater attention to the operational definitions of the elements of the social bond is necessary before the theoretical merits of the social control theory can be ascertained.

Sexual orientation and boyhood gender conformity: development of the Boyhood Gender Conformity Scale (BGCS)

Two hundred twenty-five [corrected] respondents (109 [corrected] heterosexuals and 116 [corrected] homosexuals) completed a survey containing a 20-item Boyhood Gender Conformity Scale (BGCS). This scale was largely composed of edited and abridged gender items from Part A of Freund et al.'s Feminine Gender Identity Scale (FGIS-A) and Whitam's "childhood indicators." The combined scale was developed in an attempt to obtain a reliable, valid, and potent discriminating instrument for accurately classifying adult male respondents for sexual orientation on the basis of their reported boyhood gender conformity or nonconforming behavior and identity. In addition, 33% of these respondents were administered the original FGIS-A and Whitam inventory during a 2-week test-retest analysis conducted to determine the validity and reliability of the new instrument. All the original items significantly discriminated between heterosexual and homosexual respondents. From these a 13-item function and a 5-item function proved to be the most powerful discriminators between the two groups. Significant correlations between each of the three scales and a very high test-retest correlation coefficient supported the reliability and validity assumption for the BGCS. The conclusion was made that the five-item function (playing with boys, preferring [corrected] boys' games, imagining self as sports figure, reading adventure and sports stories, considered a "sissy") was the most potent and parsimonious discriminator among adult males for sexual orientation. It was similarly noted that the absence of masculine behaviors and traits appeared to be a more powerful predictor of later homosexual orientation than the traditionally feminine or cross-sexed traits and behaviors.

Impulsive nonconformity as a trait contributing to the prediction of psychotic-like and schizotypal symptoms.

A 51-item true-false Impulsive Nonconformity Scale was constructed to measure impulsive antisocial behavior of the sort often reported in the premorbid adjustment of some psychotics. Schizophrenics and schizoaffective patients (N = 46) scored higher on the scale than control (N = 76). An experimental group of 120 aberrantly high-scoring (2 SDs above the mean) college students and 176 control subjects were interviewed using modified versions of Weissman and Paykel's Social Adjustment Scale interview and Spitzer and Endicott's Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia-Lifetime Version (SADS-L). The experimental subjects reported more antisocial and nonconforming behaviors than control subjects, supporting the construct validity of the scale as a measure of impulsive nonconformity, and reported more psychotic or psychotic-like experiences, more schizotypal experiences, and more depressive and manic or hypomanic symptoms, suggesting that a portion of the experimental subjects may be at elevated risk for psychosis and/or major affective disorder. Subjects who score aberrantly high on both the Impulsive Nonconformity Scale and our earlier Perceptual Aberration-Magical Ideation Scale are more aberrant on several other measures of schizophrenic-like cognitive slippage than are subjects who score high on only one of the two scales.

Marijuna Use Among Women-

This paper suggests that the concept of intra cultural diversity is a more useful framework for understanding non-conforming behavior among Jamaican rural women than social psychological explanations of deviance from culturally approved sex roles. A comparison of female cannabis smoking in two rural communities, permits us to identify some of the social processes which underly variation in the nature and extent of marijuana use by women in the two settings.

The relationship of personality to antisocial and neurotic behaviours as observed by teachers

Eight hundred and eight children in normal schools between the ages of 7 and 16 yr were rated on Rutter's Teachers' Rating Scale, and completed the EPQ giving Psychoticism (P), Extraversion (E), Neuroticism (N) and Lie (L). The children also reported on their own misbehaviour and social attitudes. Children exhibiting Antisocial behaviours were markedly high on P; also scoring low on L, and reporting non-conforming behaviour and attitudes. Children showing Neurotic behaviours did not have particularly distinctive personality scores, but were rather extraverted and conforming (high L). There was no relationship between Neuroticism as a disorder and Neuroticism as a personality trait. It is suggested that the P scale might usefully assist in the detection of antisocially disturbed children or in the selection of ‘high risk’ groups.

The threat to political dissidents in Kennedy's approach to mental illness.

From a psychiatrist's point of view, the definition of mental illness put forth by Ian Kennedy in his 1980 Reith Lectures on medical ethics is far too narrow. Clare rejects Kennedy's diagnostic criteria of dangerousness, helplessness, or subjective distress; he argues that the diagnosis of mania should be based on identifiable signs of psychological dysfunction that impair autonomy and responsibility. Kennedy's definition of mental illness, which embraces dangerousness and non-conforming behavior, invites the misuse of psychiatry to label and control political dissidents.

A cross-validation of the sn scale on the psychological screening inventory with female hitchhikers

Tested 17 nonhitchhiking, 14 occasional hitchhiking, and 18 frequent hitchhiking females of high school and college age with the Psychological Sereening Inventory in an attempt to study the validity of the Social Nonconformity (Sn) scale. The frequent hitchhikers scored significantly higher than both of the other groups on Sn. These results suggest that Sn has validity for detecting relatively minor variations in socially nonconforming behavior.

Reality Therapy: Helping People Help Themselves

Efforts to redirect the behavior of persons who violate laws, customs, and morals are often unsuccessful, perhaps because we tend to view behavior different from our own as evidence of mental illness of some kind or degree. We ignore legal, cultural, and other idiosyncratic determinants of who may be "okay" today and who may be in trouble tomorrow, and instead seek patho logical explanations for nonconforming behavior. Many people have been harmed by our insistence that human behavior is un derstandable and thereby treatable only in terms of mental health or mental illness, a dogma that has compartmentalized, isolated, and stigmatized those who, for one reason or another, act uncon ventionally. This paper explores a more humanistic, economic, and societally productive alternative for changing behavior and considers its application and availability to offender groups in particular. Reality therapy departs radically from the conven tional treatment orthodoxy. The conceptual differences between the two approaches as well as the basic steps for practicing reality therapy are also outlined and discussed.

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

DEOPLE who do not stop smoking, who rdo not come for early prenatal care, who do not have yearly medical checkups, who do not fasten their seat belts or space their pregnancies, or who do not take other preventive measures recommended in public health programs, are a constant concern to public health professionals. The public health worker's usual reaction to nonconforming behavior on the part of the potential recipient of services is to consider it either (1) essentially irrational, i.e., contradicting what is the person's best interest, on the basis of his own knowledge, or (2) based on ignorance, leading to an incorrect perception of his own best interest. We want to argue in this paper that the recalcitrant consumer is behaving in a way that is consistent with reality and his own best interest; that it is rather the health professional who misperceives the individual situation; and further that, in his zeal to perform his service, the health professional may also encourage misperception on the part of the consumer. The health professional's behavior can be understood in terms of his biasing exposure to special information, as well as in terms of his duty to fight disease and foster healtlh in every possible way in a community of consumers. In analyzing the lack of match between the professional's advice and the individual consumer's behavior, we hope to generate ideas about new ways for health professionals to encourage the adoption of behaviors conducive to good health.