Final answer:
Society influences individual behaviour through socialization, teaching societal norms and values from a young age. Institutions like family, schools, and media play significant roles in reinforcing societal expectations, while social roles and situations provide behavioral cues. Yet individuals, through collective action, can also reshape societal norms.
Step-by-step explanation:
Society has a big impact on the behaviour of individuals due to several interconnected reasons. Primarily, societal norms and values shape individual behavior through socialization. This process involves learning and internalizing the values and norms of the society we live in. Examples of socialization include how families and schools instill social expectations and how mass media reinforces societal standards. Additionally, we tend to be influenced by social roles, social norms, and scripts that dictate acceptable behaviors within a given context. Such situational forces can strongly influence human behavior, guiding how we act in everyday scenarios, ranging from dining customs to crisis responses.
While individuals have their personal preferences, the pressure to conform to societal expectations can be overwhelming, leading people to adapt their behaviors to fit into their societal context. This may occur because people take cues from their environment on how to behave and because societal institutions actively promote and preserve certain behaviors and roles. Power dynamics, conflict perspectives, and symbolic interactions all play a part in molding individual behaviors within society. Nevertheless, individuals can also influence and transform societal norms over time through collective action or cultural shifts.