Social adaptation

In sociology and psychology, adaptation is the process by which a group or individual modifies their behavior patterns to adjust to the prevailing norms of the social environment in which they move. When adapting, a subject abandons habits or practices that were part of her behavior, but that are negatively evaluated in the field she wishes to join, and eventually acquires others in line with those of her new role. Adaptation, in this sense, is a form of secondary socialization, since it operates based on the social skills that the subject already has.

Typical cases of situations that imply adaptation are changes in professional or educational role —such as the admission to higher education of a subject whose social origin is not in the liberal professional class— or migrations, temporary or permanent, that require the rapid adoption of canons of behavior foreign to the original environment of the individual.

Depending on the intensity with which the individual conforms to the expectations of the group, compliance is usually distinguished —in which the subject's public actions conform to the norm, but his private opinions and actions do not. are affected—, the identification —in which the individual endorses the principles and norms of the group in the scope and limited period to which he belongs to it, but the assimilation is not lasting— and the internalization —in which the subject accepts as his own the principles of judgment and evaluation codified in the norms of the group.

Social control over compliance with the rules leads, in general, to even individuals whose interests and training do not incline them to effectively abide by them. The severity of the sanctions —which does not simply correspond to the level at which they have been institutionalized in specific bodies dedicated to ratifying them— makes it possible to distinguish between customs, whose non-compliance may be eccentric, shameful or even abnormal, and mainly entail discomfort, and morés, norms that define what is acceptable in the social field and whose violation leads to exclusion from the social circle or even legal sanctions.

A compilation by L. D. Crow and a group of collaborators places the issue in the early 60s: Reading in Abnormal Psychology, translated as Adapted Behavior in Ed. Paidós. It is a set of a good number of definitions and analyzes of scientific doctrine.

Adapting to change

Some sociological currents, committed to the notion of post-industrial society or postmaterialism with the postmaterialism scale, maintain that the ability to quickly adapt is one of the central characteristics of the new social model (Inglehart 1977).; In postmaterialist society, the traditional values of material prosperity and economic development, strongly dependent on a stable environment and a roughly linear life path, would be supplanted by postmaterialist values focused on personal development and greater freedom to choose. The ability to abandon behavior patterns as necessary, that is, to increase the capacity for adaptation, would be crucial to act in a world in which deeply entrenched forms of family, work or religious structure seem to be dissolving.

Compliance

Other authors evaluate the degree to which the individual is willing to stably deviate from their previously acquired habits to guarantee the stability of the relationship as their ability to conform.

Experimental designs exist to provide a quantitative estimate of conformism, elaborated mainly from the experiments designed by Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram; Asch's experiments make it possible to estimate the pressure that the expressed opinion of other members of the group exerts on their own decisions —what has been called peer pressure—, while Milgram's experiments focus in the ability to accept orders from a person in authority, even when they conflict with one's own principles.

Research of this last type had also been integrated into the elaboration of the F scale, an index that tried to measure the degree of authoritarianism of the personality, in the studies carried out by Theodor Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford.

However, some people, especially misanthropes, believe that conformism is a mental disorder that people use to "delude themselves" that the reality in which they live is the best reality, without this being true in most cases, resulting in a false state of happiness. This idea of conformism shows conformism as a repression of the very reality of being that, sooner or later, will lead to unhappiness or, in extreme cases, mental problems.

Groupthink

In situations of high pressure for conformity —especially those in which the group is strongly homogeneous, cohesive and endowed with strong but diffuse authority—, the adjustment of individual actions to what is estimated in advance that the consensus of the group will be group leads to the adoption of decisions that individually each member would have considered inappropriate, in a form of self-fulfilling prophecy. This phenomenon, called groupthink or groupthink syndrome, especially affects large-scale organizations, especially when they do not have a bureaucratic structure that methodically defines responsibilities; the recent evolution of business management models has been particularly sensitive to it.

Social Adaptation

According to the psychological theory of Enrique Pichon-Rivière, adaptation is understood as the ability to provide an adequate and coherent response to the demands of the environment; while the sociological notion focused on the compatibility of habits with socially approved characteristics, the psychological one approaches the problem from the intellectual and emotional capacity to face the demands of the environment.

Pichon-Rivière distinguishes a passive adaptation, expressed in visible behaviors adjusted to the expectations of the therapist —such as dressing appropriately, eating regularly and according to the rules, responding predictably in conversation, which however does not imply profound changes in the psychic structure. A stereotyped pattern of regular behavior is superimposed, in this case, on a drive structure disconnected from it, in a state that Pichon-Rivière calls alienation. In an active adaptation, it is the subject's own drive conditions that are transformed, allowing him to have real and adequate contact with his environment.