Social Psychology Paper
There are several factors that contributed towards Sarah’s attitude regarding her curfew. The main factor that contributed to Sarah’s attitude towards her curfew was social cognition. Sarah was experiencing what is considered her teenage “rite of passage”, which can be described as whether or not she should lie to her parents concerning her location. The friends she met kept telling Sarah that the party was going to be very fun, and seeing that Sarah had never been to a party before, she was very anxious that her new friends wanted to hang out with her. In some instances, most adolescents are so anxious to be accepted by their friends because they want to be deemed popular and cool. This will cause most kids to do the things that they know they are not supposed to do, and rebel against their parents. Due to the restrictions put on her by her parents, partying with friends was a new thing to her, and she had never been able to experience that freedom before. The reason she decided to break the curfew and go to the party was because of her curiosity to better know and get an understanding of her society, and to see the things that she had never seen or experiences before. She feels that if she goes ahead and breaks her required curfew, then she will have a sense of completion. By her making the decision to do what her parents don’t want her to do, it is her social cognition that she still does not know very much her society and that she has more to see and know for which she takes the decision. She also decided to go to the party because of the fear of feeling she will miss out on something.
Sarah displayed cognitive dissonance because she was conflicted between two things she really wanted. These two things where the fact that she knew she must get home on time, but she also wanted to have her friends like her so that they would want to hand with her. Her new friends kept telling her how much fun the party would be, and because Sarah has never been to a party before, she is being conflicted on what she should do. She then goes ahead and made the decision to go with her new friends to the party in hopes that the party will be fun and that breaking her curfew would have to be something that she would do for the first time ever. Sarah conforms into her peers’ beliefs is the fact that she has never been to a party and that it would be fun. She is well aware that her parents have very extreme rules for her to follow, and she was torn between what she wanted to do. She also wants to believe that the party she is going to is going to be fun just like her friends stated. The situation that Sarah was in was