People's attitudes are determined more by their immediate situation or surroundings than by society as a whole.

Essay topics:

People's attitudes are determined more by their immediate situation or surroundings than by society as a whole.

The nature of one’s attitude is an elusive concept. In fact the mechanisms and factors which come to bear on one’s outlook and preferences are a centerpiece of research in sociology and social psychology. One of the principle debates on the matter concerns the question of the importance of society at large as compared with one’s immediate surrounding on forming one’s attitudes. While both may plausibly greatly redound one’s personality, there is convincing evidence to imply that the influence played by one’s immediate surroundings may supersede that of society as a whole.

Primarily one should not discount the influence of society at large. Changes in government policy, the likes of a rise in interest rates or a declaration of war have a profound effect on everyone’s lives and cannot be ignored. This is evinced by a famous phenomenon in political science – during times of war, feeling of patriotism increase, and concurrently so do the approval rating of the head of state. Clearly if one were to reject the importance of society these findings would be hard to reconcile. Nevertheless, this does not imply that the influence of society is greater than that of an individual’s immediate surroundings.

Behavioural psychologists have long posited that one of the mechanisms by which one is taught how to behave, and by which one is socialized into society is through conditioning. A person learns what is good and what is bad by getting rewarded for good actions and punished for bad ones. Much of the effect of society on our personalities is through these punishments. One learns not to steal from the threat of incarceration. Yet it is precisely this mechanism which evinces why our immediate surrounds are more important to our development, as punishments delegated by our close ones are much more impactful than those handed down by courts. This is because we have a much stronger emotional attachment to our friends and families than we do to the abstract notion of the “state” or “society”. Clearly a scolding by a parent is much more impactful to a child than is a warning by a policy officer to an adult. Additionally we are conditioned by our parents at a much earlier age than we are by the institutions of society, as often children do not even enter the formal education system until the age of 6.

Additionally it is a well-documented phenomenon that one’s upbringing often affects their general outlook on life. Children who grew up maintaining a good relationship with their parents are much more likely to become sanguine adults. This relationship also extends past the familial sphere and into their general socio-economic surroundings. Children growing up in poor neighbourhoods and who identify themselves as poor tend to have different beliefs than those growing up in affluent neighbourhoods. This discrepancy serves to explain the strong correlation between people’s socio economic levels and political preference. It is no wonder then the poorer boroughs of London tend to overwhelmingly support the Labour party while more well off districts, such as Kensington, tend to lean more to the conservatives.

It is hard to definitely state what has a greater impact on our attitudes. Yet the strong correlation between upbringing and outlook, as well as between socio-economic situations and political preferences seem to indicate that often times the effects of society as meagre compared to those of our surroundings. While not completely discounting the effect of society as a whole, we must internalize that in order to better understand the individual; we must first look to their immediate surroundings.

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Average: 6.6 (1 vote)
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Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 610, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...y supersede that of society as a whole. Primarily one should not discount the in...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 932, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Additionally,
...arning by a policy officer to an adult. Additionally we are conditioned by our parents at a ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 1, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Two successive sentences begin with the same adverb. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...ducation system until the age of 6. Additionally it is a well-documented phenomenon that...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 1, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Additionally,
...ducation system until the age of 6. Additionally it is a well-documented phenomenon that...
^^^^^^^^^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, if, look, may, nevertheless, so, then, well, while, in fact, such as, as well as

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.5258426966 133% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.4196629213 56% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 14.8657303371 121% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 11.3162921348 124% => OK
Pronoun: 42.0 33.0505617978 127% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 96.0 58.6224719101 164% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 12.9106741573 132% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3135.0 2235.4752809 140% => OK
No of words: 593.0 442.535393258 134% => OK
Chars per words: 5.28667790894 5.05705443957 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.93473315629 4.55969084622 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.33337124971 2.79657885939 119% => OK
Unique words: 284.0 215.323595506 132% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.47892074199 0.4932671777 97% => OK
syllable_count: 992.7 704.065955056 141% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59117977528 107% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 6.24550561798 144% => OK
Article: 3.0 4.99550561798 60% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 3.10617977528 161% => OK
Conjunction: 5.0 1.77640449438 281% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 1.0 4.38483146067 23% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 20.2370786517 128% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 23.0359550562 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.7730767774 60.3974514979 84% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.576923077 118.986275619 101% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.8076923077 23.4991977007 97% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.57692307692 5.21951772744 69% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.97078651685 101% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 7.80617977528 51% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 15.0 10.2758426966 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 5.13820224719 97% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.83258426966 124% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.206773923831 0.243740707755 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0537584971935 0.0831039109588 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0437864748333 0.0758088955206 58% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.110519149831 0.150359130593 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0138255385377 0.0667264976115 21% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.1392134831 105% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.69 48.8420337079 83% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.92365168539 141% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 12.1743820225 108% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.7 12.1639044944 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.91 8.38706741573 106% => OK
difficult_words: 157.0 100.480337079 156% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 11.8971910112 92% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.2143820225 96% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.7820224719 93% => OK
What are above readability scores?

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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.