How People Were Influenced By Their Perception And Judgement Of The Autokinetic Effect

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.

These groundbreaking and controversial experiments indicate that social influence and constraints can make people comform to untruth or express cruelty. We will see how Asch and Milgram teach us that in a concrete situation with efficacious social constraints our moral sense can easily be trampled.

Social influences shape every person's practices, judgments, and beliefs. (Asch 306) In "Opinions and Social Pressure", Solomon Asch examines how individuals tend to conform to a group or majority. He does this by explaining the results of his experiment that he devised to observe to what extent conformity occurs. In her essay titled "Group Minds", Doris Lessing claims that as a society we have enough knowledge about conformity to do something about it, yet we choose not to. Although Doris Lessing and Solomon Asch both suggest that people desire independence yet yield to conformity, Asch's experiment adds specificity to Lessing's claims. Lessing speaks generally about groups and the effect they have on conformity, whereas Asch's experiment

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

The predetermined ideals of how humans should act and think limits the impact of the individual, and even discourages individuals from thinking or acting outside of the mainstream, creating a “dignified homogeneity” amongst people in society (Fitzgerald 44). If one is not part of the majority, they are naturally outcasted to the point where they feel “purposeless and alone” (Fitzgerald 42). This causes people to “wear the mask that grins and lies,” which is the mark of conformity (Dunbar 1). The mask is worn to hide people’s true beliefs and desires in order to appear “normal” or as part of the majority. Conforming with a group against one’s own beliefs has become engrained in the American way of life, which is particularly evident in Asch’s experiment.

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 situation of changing one’s behavior in order to match the actions of the society around the person. The social influence cause people to agree or even behave like the majority of the people in the specific group so that the group can perceive them as normal. Solomon Asch (1956) was interested to know the act of people in conformity pressure. Because of that, he created an experiment to investigate the process by asking college students in a group of eight to match the lengths of different lines. The experiment shows that 95% of the students correctly match 12 lines without pressure of group. Ash repeats the experiment by changing the situation. The students now need to hear answers of five other people who are actually confederates

This report will compare two experiments; Asch 's conformity experiment and Milgram 's obedience experiment. The two experiments will be compared for validity and their ethics. In addition, this report will take into consideration Zimbardo 's Stanford Prison experiment and the Lucifer Effect. To analyse how obedience and conformity theories can be used as an example of why good people can turn bad. This report will also look at how obedience and conformity can be applied to the criminal justice system.

Social psychology, as a discipline, has given relatively little attention to the problem of evil in society, and those discussions in this field that do exist typically regard evil actions as only varieties of aggression without any characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of intentional mistreatment of others (Berkowitz, 1999). Because of the field's situationistic perspective emphasizing the individual's susceptibility to the power of the immediate situation, social psychologists generally view the fairly high levels of obedience to authority displayed in Milgram's classic experiment as the paradigmatic example of evil behavior (Berkowitz, 1999). Reading about the work of Ross and Nisbett, 1991 (as cited in Berkowitz,

Solomon Asch’s study on conformity displays a common occurrence of our behavior, when interacting with others. A experience of mine were I conformed to an idea, due to everyone else choosing that idea occurred during a debate in one my history classes. The debate was based around Genghis Khan and whether his actions and legacies make him an evil or good person. During each round of the debate one of the opposing sides would present an idea fighting for their side, which for the team opposing me was that he was an evil person. They presented the idea that Khan never established a social order within his empire. For my sides rebuttal they chose to provide evidence of increased social order after his conquering, but did not necessarily bring up

In some cases, it occurs with people’s knowledge of others, it happens without much of a person’s awareness. In some instances, an individual will do things that they do not agree with or even behave in ways they know are unjust. People go along with a group even when it is clear to them that the group is doing the wrong things. Cialdini and Goldstein (2004), are contemporary scholars who make a great contribution to understanding the theory of social conformity. They gave two major reasons that make people conform, namely the normative influence, which stems from a strong urge to gain rewards, follow the rules and avoid punishments. This makes a person get along with others by doing what they do even when he or she does not agree with it, to be liked by them. It entails following the norms. Cialdini and Goldstein stated that normative conformity occurs when a person changes or even modifies his or her behavior to fit in a group. The second one entails informational influence which occurs when a person changes his or her behavior to be correct. This occurs during situations where people are uncertain about what is correct and do what others are doing. In most cases, one looks at a person they perceive to be knowledgeable and imitates them. It entails agreeing with the judgments made by another person who is perceived to be highly intelligent. Informative conformity occurs when a person does not have the knowledge and looks for direction and information from another the

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)

Normative influence primarily occurs in situations where an individual, when amidst others in a crowd, tend to go along with them primarily in order to be liked and accepted by them as part of their fraternity. Research has identified that normative inference normally occurs as an inborn human nature as human beings tends to associate themselves with others in order to maintain a good social contact and relationship with them. Ideally, normative influence is normally furthered by the need for an individual to increase their chances of surviving especially during adverse conditions. This entails that people may at times seem to agree with others just in order for them to appease themselves to them and avoid potential conflict of standing alone and standing out. In some situations normative influence may occur where individuals associate with complete strangers. In such cases, due to mutual fear for each other, an individual may naturally try to agree with the rest in order to avoid appearing as contradictory or controversial.

There are criticisms with this experiment though because people believe that "the research concentrates on the individual rather than the situation they are in. Also, the research invariably deals with very trivial tasks or judgments. For example, ` how long is the line?' Well who cares?" (Philip Banyard and Andrew Grayson, Introducing Psychological Research, p9). The study was also often done on students, of which are more likely to conform due to the fact that they do not want to be different than what they thought were other students in the group. It might have portrayed them as `stupid' and may even have thought if they gave the wrong answer (which was actually the correct answer but others said differently) thought the others may think they had a weakness in their intelligence if they didn't concur with them. The meaningless nature of the task, no emotional involvement and that they were all strangers to one another also affected the responses of the research participant. In fact, the results of the experiment may have shown conformity considerably higher than in a `real life' situation where people are more likely to put forward their own beliefs about