Opinions and Social Pressure Essay

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.

Peer pressure can be used in many ways. Animal Farm is an allegory by George Orwell. It is about farm animals that weren’t satisfied of how their farm is run so they rebel. They make 7 commandments being “All animals are equal” the most important one. The book shows how total equality is hard to achieve and power corrupts. The novel uses peer pressure to control and manipulate what is happening on the farm. It is evident on how the action of the animals changes. It is evident on how Boxer’s way of thinking changes. It is also evident in the actions of the sheep and what it does to the other animals. Peer pressure plays a big role in this novel.

First, the experiment Solomon Asch began in 1955 gives an example how social influence can sway or perception of reality. The results are an example of normative social influence and informational social influence. Additionally, the participants exhibit the need to gain a person’s approval, and was willing to accept others opinions about reality. Consequently, a persons moral sense

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

In Solomon E. Asch’s social pressure experiment, subjects were shown a line on a piece of paper and instructed to choose a line of the same length on a different piece of paper with two other lines of varying lengths. All but one of the subjects in each experiment group were instructed to choose the wrong answer on purpose, unbeknownst to the last member. The last member of the group, who did not know

Solomon Asch tested conformity at Swarthmore College in 1951 by putting a participant in a group of people whose task was to match line lengths. Each individual was expected to announce which of three lines was the closest in length to a reference line. But the participant was placed in a group of actors, who were all told to give the correct answer twice then switch to each saying the same incorrect answer. Asch wanted to see whether the participant would conform and start to give the wrong answer as well, knowing that he would otherwise be a single outlier.

On average, about thirty-two percent of the participants conformed to pick the blatantly wrong answer and over the twelve trials seventy-five percent of the students conformed at least once, and twenty-five didn’t conform at all. Many of the participants afterward admitted they conformed to give the wrong answer because they wanted to avoid being ridiculed and some thought the group really was correct. Is was the results of this experiment that led Asch to conclude that whenever people conform it’s to either fit in or because they believe that since they’re in the minority their conclusion is incorrect. Another influential experiment concerning conformity is the Stanford Prison Experiment. Conducted in 1973, Phillip Zimbardo wanted to determine if brutality in prison systems was due to the

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

Solomon Asch 's (1951) conformity experiment is the study of people adapting their behaviours in order to follow the social normalities. This experiment entails a group of people who are actors and know about the experiment, and one person who is unknowing of the experiment, which are all in the same room. The group is shown a pair of cards; card A has a line on the card, and card B has three lines varying in length on the card, the similarities of the lines are obvious. The group individually, saying out loud picks one of the three lines on card B that matches the length of the line on card A. Everybody picks the correct line, this happens for a few rounds, then when shown another pair of cards the first actor chooses the wrong line on card B. The rest of the actors choose the same line the first actor chose, this tests to see if the unknowing participant will choose the same answer as the group (McLeod, 2008). The person who is unknowing of the

An interesting question that scientists and philosophers have studied for hundreds of years is how large groups come together to make a common decision. This process is called social choice. The main aspect about social choice that has been addressed is how multiple choices of individuals in a group become one preference for the entire group. The main groups that have been studied in regard to social choice are human groups, and how we have developed a voting system to choose one outcome over many other alternatives. Humans are not the only group that participates in social choice. This also occurs in different animal groups, but has not been studied as long as social choice in human groups. In particular, the

Zou et al draw upon previous research demonstrating how perceived consensus occurs within groups. Groups can be particularly useful when we are unsure of the situation through two functions: comparative and normative. The comparative function serves as a benchmark; individuals will look towards others to see how they compare in terms of behavior and values. The normative function acts as a standard of behavior; when we are uncertain, we will look towards others to determine what is the normal and accepted. Sherif’s 1935 Autokinetic study provides a case of when normative influence becomes internalized. Participants were engaged in a perceptual judgment task either alone or in a group and were instructed to look at a light in a dark room. Although the light is stationary, it appears to be moving in a dark room, and participants were told to indicate how much they thought the light was moving. Through repeated trials in groups, participants’ answers began to converge towards a mean distance, indicating a perceived consensus. The significance is that the light was not moving—the participants were affected by others’ perceptions and their judgments of the distance began to converge. This experiment demonstrates how people will look towards others for guidance in ambiguous situations. Furthermore, the perceived consensus subsequently became internalized. Zou et al apply this understanding of perceived consensus to culture by arguing that perceptions of knowledge construct what

Pressure group is defined as a non-profit and usually voluntary organization whose member have a common cause for which they seek to influence political or corporate decision makers to achieve a declared objective but not to elected candidates to office. They can also be described as ‘interest groups’, ‘lobby groups’ or ‘protest groups’. The aim of all pressure groups is to influence the people who actually have the power to make decisions. Pressure groups do not look for the power of political office but seek influence the decisions made by those who hold the political power such as cabinet. They are sometimes able to gather sufficient support to force government to amend or even scrap legislation. Pressure group direct

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)

Solomon Asch did an experiment on conformity, and 70% of the subjects chose wrong because they went along with what everyone else in the group said. The subjects that went against the group still felt weird about being alone in the answer they chose. Millgram, a scientist who learned from Asch, did an experiment to see how far someone would go in listening to orders. He told the subject he was teaching someone memory, and every wrong answer the learner would receive a shock. 2/3 of the subjects didn’t go all the way, but a majority of them listened to what they were told to do.

In this story, an author has also explained about his observation done between college students. The college students were asked to give their opinions on various matter like choices which, resulted with argumentative situation opposing to their own opinions, many subjects apparently shifted their judgments in the direction of the views of majority or experts. The sheer weight of number or authority sufficed to change opinion, even when no arguments for the opinions themselves were provided. There is some reason to wonder whether it was not the investigation who, in their enthusiasm for a theory, were suggestible and whether the seemingly gullible subjects were not providing answers which they thought were good subjects to discuss. The author describes a series of experiment which have not only confirmed the finding that group pressure can shape opinion, but also raised