Shelby Ostergaard Conformity

Jack Callahan Mrs. Roby English 4th Period 19 September 2024 Conformity. It’s a simple word, yet it is very misunderstood. People have always conformed because it’s in our human nature. In Shelby Ostergaard’s article “It’s no one’s fault when it’s everyone’s fault” she talks about conformity. Similarly, in the unit titled “conformity” there are many examples of conformity like deindividuation and diffused responsibility. Even though this entire unit is about conformity, there are many kinds of conformity. One kind of conformity is called diffused responsibility. This kind of conformity can be seen through the short stories “Man in the well” and “The lottery” and portrays that when people are in a group they can often times not feel responsible for the groups actions.
None of them felt responsible because of how large the group was, thus bringing us back to “It’s no one’s fault when it’s everyone’s fault.” Likewise, in “Man in the well” a group of children stumbles upon a man who is stuck in a well. As individuals many of the children were going to help the man, but formed as a group they decided not only not to help him but to string him along until his death at the end of the story. Not only did we learn about diffused responsibility in this unit, but we also learned about deindividuation. Deindividuation is when in a group people do not feel as if they are one person, they feel as if they are one with the group, almost as if the group was one entity. This can lead to instances of diffused responsibility, which is another kind of conformity. An example of deindividuation would be in the story “The Lottery” at the end of the story in paragraph 74 when all the towns’ people pick up stones to kill the winner of the lottery. The people that she knew had swiftly turned into a mob to kill her, no longer