Behavior can be defined as an individual’s response to an action. The provoked feeling that propels someone to move or strike is the behavior. Behavior is influenced by many different factors. Some examples of these factors could be one’s genetic makeup, environment or individual thoughts and feelings. What makes one person’s behavior uniquely different from another? The world is very diverse in means of different habits, cultures and sex. This diversity is what sets each individual behavior apart from one another. However, does this mean that we are made to function according to the expectancy of society? In order for anyone to answer this question, it is essential to understand how the effects of the adopted set values play into our daily lives which can be seen in Susan Faludi’s essay “The Naked Citadel.” In “The Naked Citadel,” Faludi describe all the changes that occurred when they accidently admitted a female cadet into an all-male military institution. She also described the environment of the Citadel and noted the different changes that occurred in the behavior of the cadets. For example, a cadet that is part of the “fourth-class system” undergo a ritual known as “stripping”. Stripping is when the original identity of a person is removed and then rebuilt. This new version of the cadets could make their behavior more violent and extremely emotional. However, the problems at the Citadel can be supported by Malcom Gladwell’s essay “The Power of Context – which examines how the physical environment we creates can have a dramatic impact on people’s behavior.” In “The Naked Citadel,” Gladwell’s essay proves how the institution’s environment can affect the behavior and action of cadets. One way of looking at this problem is through perception. Perception is not only the way one perceives their surroundings but also the key to many disagreements within society. This holds true with the situation at the Citadel when a female cadet named Shannon Faulkner was accepted into the institution. The perception at the Citadel is that women shouldn’t be a good fit for the institution because many felt that women would be destroying a long and proud tradition. Tradition has been a major part of the Citadel in which the institution is intended to train “real men.” The Citadel has always been an all boy school as “except of course, they weren’t really boys at all. These were college men” (Faulkner 78). Who’s to say what defines a man? In society, men are expected to think, act and live in a masculine manner. In order to do that, “men are stripped of their identity by being pressured into masculine roles by our society…and that it was expected of cadets to ‘act like a man’ instead of simply fitting the roles of human beings” (282). Thus, when a men show his sensitivity or emotions, society tend to considered that a threat or taboo. Not only that, society saw the Citadel as an all-male school and wanted to keep it that way. According to Gladwell, this aspect of perception of character is referred to as FAE or the Fundamental Attribution Error. “The mistake we make in thinking of characters something unified and all-encompassing is very similar to a kind of blind spot in the way we process information” (Gladwell 159). This means that, there is a tendency for people to place an unnecessary emphasis on internal characteristics, like personality, to explain someone else’s behavior in a given situation rather than
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Society is not an all-male world anymore, it is an interracial society in which men cannot just be leaders by showing their masculinity. This is one of the reason why men go to an all-male institution. At the Citadel, cadets are able to create their small world and “feel called to defend those walls”, because some things in their lives are “endangered from without” (Faludi 103). For this reason, the cadets feel that the Citadel is a place where they can not only discharge their feelings but also feel better by earning the sense of becoming leaders and winners. Henceforth, the immediate context is just a trigger that gives opportunity for people to behave in a certain way. The growth and living environment are real causes that build people’s characteristics, which can lead to certain
Society is not an all-male world anymore, it is an interracial society in which men cannot just be leaders by showing their masculinity. This is one of the reason why men go to an all-male institution. At the Citadel, cadets are able to create their small world and “feel called to defend those walls”, because some things in their lives are “endangered from without” (Faludi 103). For this reason, the cadets feel that the Citadel is a place where they can not only discharge their feelings but also feel better by earning the sense of becoming leaders and winners. Henceforth, the immediate context is just a trigger that gives opportunity for people to behave in a certain way. The growth and living environment are real causes that build people’s characteristics, which can lead to certain