reveal that we are more likely to conform when we are made to feel incompetent or insecure, are in a group with at least three people, are in a group in which everyone else agrees, admire the group status and so on (Myers & DeWall, 2014). In essence, it means that in order to break from the accepted norm, it would mean to slow things down for others. If you find yourself walking down a crowded street and suddenly everyone drops down, almost certainly your first impulse is to drop down along with them although with a delayed response. The cost for a person to drop down with the crowd unexpectedly certainly outweighs the potential danger that is implied. There are many ways an individual can find themselves in a situation to conform. To conform …show more content…
Solomon Asch used a simple experiment to test this question. He devised an experiment in which he took college students and had them match the length of a line against the lengths of three others. Since the comparisons were quite simple, conforming to peer pressure meant that participants had to agree with the other students even when the other students were clearly wrong (Levine, J. M. 1999). To do so, the first two waves were set up in which to gain the trust of the participant by having all the students that were in on it, the confederates, answer correctly. But by the third wave, the confederates were told to answer incorrectly. One by one each confederate answered the same incorrect answer in which it set up a dilemma for the participant. The question then became whether or not the participant was bold enough to answer correctly and stick out or would they just answer the same to fit in because it is less uncomfortable and easier. However, around this time, many of the participants started to show clear signs of being uncomfortable and Asch found that around 73% of the participants caved into peer pressure and answered incorrectly at least once (Levine, J. M. …show more content…
Muzafer Sherif saw this as a situation in which an individual can be influenced by suggestion. To ready his experiment, he first placed participants individually inside a dark room and had them approximate the distance the light traveled. Consistently these participants, individually, came up with the approximation of 2-6 inches (Dewy, 2007). When the next round of the experiment came, Sherif placed participants with others effectively creating a group. As the participants reanalyzed the light, their perception eventually became aligned with the others in the room to more of an average of 4 inches (Dewy, 2007). For the final installment, the participants were again individually placed into a room by themselves and asked to reanalyze the light. The participants who were previously exposed to the group setting and had a fixed notion that the light was moving 2 inches now concluded that the light moved 4 inches (Dewy, 2007). The participants had conformed to the group norms instead of what they really though. The participants desire to conform was strong that they increased their conformities to fit into the group.
Conclusion
Cognitive dissonance is when we try to limit and reduce our feeling of discomfort when two opposing thoughts clash (Myers & DeWall, 2014). This often involves human individuality and conformity.
But conforming to what the majority is doing because it is deemed as cool is a whole different story. Instead of conforming to keep society running smoothly, we sometimes conform due to fear that we will receive hateful backlash for breaking against the norm or in fear that we will be wrong. Solomon Asch explains the latter reason when he conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform. In his experiment, there was only one true participant and 4 other fake participants that will help prove his point correct. Cards were shown to everyone where there were lines of different length illustrated. They all had to choose which line was the longest. The first four people at the table were the fake participants and purposely chose the wrong answers. The last person was the true participant in the experiment and in all of the experiments they conducted, the last person always went with what the rest of the group thought even though he knew that the answer was incorrect. After the experiment was conducted, the real participants were interviewed and asked why they went along with everyone else even though they knew the answer was incorrect. “Most of them said that they did not really
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.
Conformity is a concept that has been heavily researched in the field of social psychology. Conformity is defined as a change in behavior, beliefs, and attitudes due to group pressure perceived as real (encompassing the presence of others) or imagined (encompassing the pressure of social standards) (Myers, 2010, p. 192). The concept of conformity is a powerful influence on the tendency for people to arrange their thoughts, perspectives, and ideas with others, especially when in a group. This takes away from a person’s individuality because they want to feel accepted by others and therefore, a person will accomplish this basic need of approval through conforming.
Asch’s experiment was performed in 1951 and is now a classic experiment in psychology. Asch asked individuals a simple question and a high percentage answered correctly. Then Asch placed a participant in a room with seven actors who had predetermined incorrect answers. When asked in front of the group, 75% of people would give incorrect answers clearly because of they conformed to the actors around them. Asch then concluded that it is natural for one to conform to society in order to fit
If one is trying to pull a thought or feeling in closer, or push it away, they may be attempting to manipulate their cognitive dissonance. If one knows that they are not happy with their actions, they can dilute that feeling of cognitive dissonance by decreasing the negative or enhancing the positive attitudes about it (Smith & Mackie, n.d.). One might be a smoker for instance, and know that smoking is bad for them, but continue smoking anyway. A perception of a clash of unsuitable elements is a way to describe the way one feels when their actions and beliefs are at odds (McLeod, 2014). So, if one is unhappy about the things they do because they do not match what they think they should do, they will be said to be experiencing cognitive dissonance.
What is cognitive dissonance? Give an example of cognitive dissonance. Also, explain how one would adjust behaviors to become more consistent with attitudes. Cognitive dissonance is when you have conflicting/contradictory beliefs or views on something that can cause you to feel some sort of guilt or “discomfort.” A prime example of cognitive dissonance is smoking.
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
Often times in life people will feel it necessary to conform in order to fit into certain groups of people. When a person conforms it usually leads to them changing the way they behave. This
The Asch experiment was an experiment design to demonstrate the degree to which an individual’s own the majority group influences judgment and individuality. The experiment is similar to the Milgram Experiments because both show how common human beings are being pressured to change their behavior by an authority figure or the majority opinion around them. There was “Asch Conformity experiment”, it was an experiment that requires eight subjects to be seated around a table, which seven of them were actors and one real participant. There were fifty real subjects in the experiment. The seating arrangement was carefully constructed to prevent any suspicion. The actors were carefully tutored to give certain responses, which was a carefully throughout
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.
1. fundamental attribution error - a person that in a given situation evaluates another's person decision or action by some internal characteristics, not taking into consideration exceptional situations that might lead that person in such a decision or action. example: Alice, a driver, is about to pass through an intersection. Her light turns green and she begins to accelerate, but another car drives through the red light and crosses in front of her.
Cognitive dissonance means feeling tension when our thoughts and beliefs are inconsistent. An example of this is when people smoke even though they are aware of the consequences that can occur such as cancer which leads to cognitive dissonance. This occurs almost everyday in our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. An one example that was shown on one of the episodes of Friends made us aware of this happening.
Cognitive dissonance is the concept of two opposed ideas that cause either a change in one's life beliefs or morals. This refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of discomfort leading to a change in one of the attitudes beliefs or actions to reduce the discomfort and restore balance. For example, when people smoke (behavior) and they know that smoking causes cancer (cognition), they are in a state of cognitive dissonance. This concept of cognitive dissonance can expand to a much deeper sense. From people's everyday habits and changes
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)
. In social psychology, cognitive dissonance is when a person experiences discomfort caused by stress brought on by the simultaneously holding of inconsistent attitudes and thoughts. People have a tendency to try and maintain consistency in their cognition. When there is dissonance in a person’s behavior and their attitudes, the person must change something in order to alleviate the dissonance.. Research has shown when a person’s behaviors are not in line with his/her beliefs at the time cognitive dissonance is created.