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To follow rules and regulations closely.
To do what is accepted and proper.
To follow a strict code of conduct.
To follow social standards of conduct. :
To always maintain the highest moral standards.
To do things in the approved manner.
To attend strictly to the business at hand.
To conform strictly to the rules.
To do my duty. :
To always do what is morally right.
To do what is socially correct.
To show respect to my superiors.
To do what is considered conventional.
To have proper and correct social manners.
To always do the approved thing.
This re-interpretation of the Conformity scale is supported by the multiple regression results in
which preferences for Leadership, Support and Recognition over Conformity were the best
independent predictors of not rejecting the institution of private property. These show a
preference for socially secured control of resources in lieu of being obedient to social norms.
Social systems need to have mechanisms to constrain the behavior of their members
(Campbell, 1982). Private property would appear to be one such mechanism. Campbell (1982)
describes four mechanisms of social control:
(1) Mutual monitoring
This includes face-to-face approval and disapproval, ostracism, conformity pressure,
shame and pride. All group members share in both detecting violations and enforcing
sanctions.
. (2) Internalized restraint
This category includes processes of conscience or superego, the pain of guilt feelings, and
the fear of supernatural sanctions. There is self-monitoring of norm violations and
self-punishment.
(3) Legal control
Overt rules about offenses and punishments are in this mode. The detection of violations
and the enforcement of penalties are delegated to specialists such as police, militia, tax
collectors, and judiciary. Sanctions include job loss, imprisonment, fines, exile and death.
Rational bureaucratic systems are included in this category, as is government by
administrative regulation.
(4) Market mechanisms
in such processes the intelligently selfish choice of all individuals curb the greed of
individuals by making it unprofitable, as in the ‘invisible hand’ of laissez-faire economics
and libertarian political theory. (Campbell, 1982, pp. 434-435)
Property behavior would seem to be a component of all four mechanisms. For example, people
monitor who owns what, they expect internalized restraint towards others’ property, they have
systems of property law, and they have economic systems of property exchange. Conformity
would certainly seem to be a component of the first two. As it was explained in the early
Christian theories of property, private property constrains the behavior of men by subjecting
them to various realms of dominion (Schlatter, 1951). Property depends on conformity by others
to property norms but it also gives the owner a realm of independence and dominion.