Analysis Of Solomon Asch Conformity

Having read of Asch’s and Miligrams experiments in the past I still find it surprising how many of the participants obeyed or conformed to social pressures. Each experiment essentially comes to the same conclusion that people tend to obey authoritative figures and conform when they are under pressure. Although not all participants obeyed or conformed in each experiment a large majority did. Asch’s experiment seemed very simple, guessing which line was longer, but evolved into something very complex in regards to uncovering how people conform to certain situations. One would assume that although others may choose a line that is obviously incorrect the subject would choose the correct answer and stick to it. People in general conform to all types of situations, whether in school, home or work.

In 1951, Solomon Asch carried out several experiments on conformity. The aim of these studies was to investigate conformity in a group environment situation. The purpose of these experiments was to see if an individual would be swayed by public pressure to go along with the incorrect answer. Asch believed that conformity reflects on relatively rational process in which people are pressured to change their behaviour. Asch designed experiments to measure the pressure of a group situation upon an individual judgment. Asch wanted to prove that conformity can really play a big role in disbelieving our own senses.

Some incidences I am aware of when I conform and in other circumstances I must do automatically because I do not notice my conformity. There was one particular incident which involved a group discussion in class, my sophomore year of college. I was taking a political science course to fulfill my general education requirement and my group and I were discussing the Constitution. We have just learned new concepts and we have to apply them to the Constitution and the teacher also gave a case study as an activity to complete during class. I had never taken a political science class before and everyone in my group was majoring in political science. Therefore, I felt as though I did not have sufficient knowledge on the topics like everyone else in the group. There was a lot of personal opinion in these particular answers and while I would think of something in my head, I did not agree with any of the other four people in my group. I thought maybe it is because I am a psychology major and I think about situations differently. I believed that everyone else in the group was more knowledgeable when it came to these topics and better informed. When we jotted down our final responses, I did not agree with any of the responses but because I thought they were more informed, I conformed. I agreed with the responses outwardly, but not inwardly. I did not want to be wrong or rejected from my group members. This

The acts of conforming and obeying shape us significantly, whether we are conscious of it or not. They do so in ways that psychologists Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram attempt to explain through their research. Asch touches base on the topic of conformity and discusses the ways in which group behaviors and social norms can influence the decisions an individual makes. On the other hand, Milgram’s focus is on obedience, and he studied it by measuring average, everyday people and their willingness to obey authority figures, even if it involves actions that go against their personal beliefs and morals. They have provided evidence through experiments, and with this information, it becomes easier to understand the world of politics, and how these

Solomon Asch set up a laboratory experiment using deception and confederates to determine what factors were involved in conformity and individual decisions in group decisions. Asch instructed subjects to choose which of three lines was the same length as the original line shown. Each subject was on a panel with seven other subjects, however in reality were confederates. The experimenter demonstrated the two cards and asked the individuals to choose the line on the comparison card that is the same length as the standard line. In the second trial the process was repeated again. However, on the third trial, when the card is revealed everyone gave wrong answers. The results indicate that approximately 75% of the subjects went with the group’s

Conformity is a type of social influence which involves a change in behaviour and belief of a minority to fit in with the group concerning real or imagined group pressures. This behaviour could be defined as the pressure to behave in ways that are viewed as acceptable by a particular group, brought about either by a desire to ‘fit in’ or be liked. The main factor that influences conformity are social norms. Social Norms are a pattern of expected behaviour in certain situations either implicitly or explicitly. Conformity exists in two categories, normative influence where the individual’s desire is to gain social approval and acceptance from the group to make a favourable impression. And informational social influence where a person is looking for guidance in an ambiguous situation as the individual listens to other member 's views and opinions to be guided to an answer. Conformity is distinguished in three different types; Compliance is the most superficial type of conformity. It refers to a person who conforms publicly with the views and attitudes expressed by the group but still continue to privately disagree. This temporary short term behavioural change which often results normative social influence. For example, It is a student 's first day of college, but has arrived late and missed the induction to which he doesn 't know where to go. He then sees a group of students filing off towards a corridor and

This experiment found that when a group of two other people refused to obey the conditions of the experiment, then the third person would most likely do the same.  It was found that, “The presence of others who are seen to disobey the authority figure reduces the level of obedience to 10%” (McLeod 588). A similar finding is noted in Solomon Asch’s “Opinions and Social Pressure”, where it was found that when someone is among their peers, they are more likely to conform to the group opinion. Asch acknowledges that social pressure plays a large role because the individual “must declare his judgments in public, before a majority which has also stated its position publicly” (Asch 599). This confirms the idea that an individual is more likely to conform when they are being judged by their

I will be providing an example of conformity from my life that happened during high school. In high school I took this English class with a friend of mine and one day the teacher decided to have a debate. The process of the debate is that if you agree with the statement then you sit on the right side of the class but if you disagree with the statement you sit on the left, now I can’t really remember which statement it was, but I remember it being very one sided and I remember everyone in the class, like literally everyone sat on the right. Now I obviously was against the statement, however, I decided to join everyone else in conformity because I believed that no matter what I was about to say was probably going to be wrong because I would be

Psychologists have long wondered about the power of conformity and social norms on human behavior, whether or not an individual will act outside of their beliefs in order to fit in. In the 1950s, Solomon Asch decided to research this question. However, instead of researching vague concepts, such as attitudes, ethics, morals, and belief systems, he chose to focus on perceptual conformity, the extent to which humans tend to conform with one another’s perceptions of the world. Asch chose to study a simple visual comparison that could easily he and other researchers could easily construct and repeat in a laboratory setting. He theorized, along with many other researchers of his time, that one could manipulate another’s behavior by applying group

Asch’s Conformity Study (1955) shows us how social influence can alter behaviour. On the video one reason a participant gave for conforming was that they wanted to avoid going against the group (Asch, HeroicImaginationTV, 2012, Asch Conformity Experiment, [Video File] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyDDyT1lDhA). Whilst I was working on a construction site on a remote island off the coast of Western Australia I observed that when workers exited either the plane or bus they would file off one by one from the first seat backwards in order. This may not seem too strange but after observing this I made a point to take notice when on commercial airlines and buses and noted that everyone seemed to get up and make their

There is a fundamental human need to belong to social groups especially if people were to live and work together, it is likely that they need to agree on common beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviours in order to get along and fit-in. Thus, we learnt to conform to rules of other people, the more people see others behaving in a particular way or making particular decisions, the more likely people will feel obliged to follow the suit. This is called conformity and can be defined in different ways, Aronson, Wilson & Akert (2014) stated it is the changing of one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. According to Deutsch and Gerard (1955), social influence should be distinguished into two types, the informational social influence and normative social influence. The occurrence of social influence has implied to many real life events, which has drawn many researchers to attention. This has lead many researchers to design distinct experiments to try and understand the cause of the conformity, whether conformity is situation dependent, and whether we are able to resist social influences.

There are lots of articles discussing this topic and there are a few specific ones that stand out. In the article “You Are a Conformist (That Is, You Are Human)” by Noam Shpancer, it shows the pros of conformity of society by using facts and other conducted experiments.In his article Shpancer states that “ Recent research shows that social disapproval provokes the brain’s danger circuits. Conformity soothes”(Shpancer, par.

Have you ever stopped to consider why you buy your food at a supermarket, and don’t randomly eat the mushrooms growing in your yard? This is a good example of beneficial conformity. Ancestors of the past have taught us that eating untested food could result in destructive side-effects, and thus eating what everyone else deams safe is a practical option. Another reason a person may crave to conform- by either behaving accordingly to set standards, or by agreeing with something you may generally disagree with normally, would be for others acceptance. Those that go along to get along assist in maintaining a tranquil and harmonious society for people to live in. Getting along with those around you is also good for protection purposes. Our antecedents have proven to us that there’s safety in numbers, apparent both with previous security against wild animals, and now with natural resources and other cultural-based threats. In this way, people conform and will object against true facts- if it means that others will accept and welcome them. Sometimes having an opinion that differs from the rest will be correct- but that

Asch’s experiment teaches us that conformity is most likely when the individual has to stand alone in group settings. Asch’s experiment teaches us that an individual will go against his own judgment when the group differs from the individual. Even when he knows he is correct, an individual will go with the group because of peer pressure.

Solomon Asch was a psychologist that conduced numerous expirments designed to illustrate the increasing conformity within social groups. The experiments also invesigated the effect the number of people present within the group had one the conformity rate. Asch hypothesized, “ that the majority of the people would not conform to something obviosly wrong; however, when surrounded by (other) individuals all voicing an incorrect answer, 75% of them(the participant) will conform to the groups answer” (Watzlawick 1976)