FITTING IN

People differ in their personalities, attitudes, and values, and an understanding of our individual personality is profoundly important in many cultural atmospheres. How you are perceived and how you want to be perceived differs cross culturally in terms of fitting in. Many people including me have told a lie, acted a certain way or conformed to a group in order to fit in. The key word here is conform, there are several motivations to conform that drive individuals socially and culturally. Growing up I understood conformity; well at least I thought I did. The way I dressed, the shoes I wore and the way I talked was influenced by my cultural surroundings and my struggle to fit in. In the community I lived in growing up majority of my friends where of Jamaican decent and they spoke a dialect that was prominent and popular in our area. I would often speak the same as them in order to conform and not stick out. Time passed but I would still be concerned with conforming. In high school Jordan sneakers were very popular, of course with any popular fashion trend these shoes were highly overpriced but I had to have them. I would save my paycheques and every bit of money I could get in order to buy these shoes just because they were cool and everyone had them. With the use of cultural psychology I know now that a key goal in independent cultural contexts is to achieve belongingness with others, which makes perfect sense when I think about the issue of conformity.