Individualism versus Conformity

One of the primary complaints about American society in the 1950s was that people were experiencing severe pressure to conform to conventional values. The rugged individualist was a dying breed in the United States, according to some social theorists, replaced by men and women who wanted more to .t in than to stand out.

David Reisman, a University of Chicago sociologist, and Nathan Glazier published The Lonely Crowd in 1950, a book asserting that Americans were increasingly looking to social institutions and mass media to understand how to live their lives, versus looking inward at personal convictions. People wanted to belong to a group but ultimately felt lonely and could not honestly identify with the group. William Whyte's book, The Organizational Man, made a similar point. Americans during the post-World War II years worked primarily for the betterment of the corporation, he argued, diminishing creativity and...