Davidson Identity

Research Paper: Identity and Fashion at Davidson College As the nation 's need for education continues to grow, more and more high school graduates are choosing to attend college after graduation. Today, there is an increasing number of people, across ethnic groups attempting to ameliorate their economic status. This is an important question to study because with this newfound variety of ethnicity and diversity entering into the college sphere, there comes a larger assortment of fashion and cultural trends that are changing daily. We intend with this research to show insight on how to some extent a large majority of students in college populations, within the realm of fashion, tend to conform to a prototypical style over time. Indeed, we tend

In “How Behaviors Are Influenced by Perceived Norms, A Test of the Theory of Normative Social Behavior” , Rajiv N. Rimal and Kevin Real analyzed the different mechanisms existing in the college environment that lead to certain common behavior, in their case alcoholism. They also drew the difference between descriptive and injuctive norms, the descriptive norms only described what is the environment in which college students evolve, whereas injuctive norms are the one imposing certain behaviors for them to fit into the environment described by the descriptive norms. Those two types of norms do not interfere with one another, but they can both act simultaneously on the same individual. While the injuctive norms are materialized by social pressure from other individuals such as college peers, behavioral changes induced by descriptive norms are borne out the individual him/herself. It would be interesting to see which one of these two norms have the more impact onto Davidson students relating to their fashion choices and

We will draw out of the observed sample a certain number of willing participants with whom we will conduct interviews in which we will ask them about the evolution of their fashion identity since they have become Davidson student and also how they perceive Davidson fashion identity. Besides, even though this evolution might not have been consciously directed, we will still look for its reason in order to understand the sociological power, which drove them in this new direction. Taking advantage of the international diversity present on campus, our sample will not only include American students but also international ones in order to widen even more the spectrum of our