Sticking to Your Guns or Conforming to Social Pressure in a Study, “A Minority of One Against a Unanimous Majority” by Solomon E. Asch

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.

Salomon E. Asch in his essay “Opinions and Social Pressure” conducted an experiment to determine effects of group pressure towards an individual and concluded that there is a very strong tendency to conformity even when doing so conflicting with their own senses of morality. In the experiment a group of young students have to compare length of lines on two different sheets of paper. On one of them there is a sample single line and on the other one there are three lines only one of which is same size as the sample line from the first sheet. People taking part in this experiment are instructed to point at lines that are the same length. At first, during the experiment the group is

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.

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

Overall, one-third (32%) of the participants conformed to the majority in the twelve critical trials. Over the course of the twelve critical trials, 75% of the participants were shown to conform, while only 25% never conformed. The control group, on the other hand, less than 1% of its participants gave the wrong answer. All in all, a good majority of the real participants felt pressure by group and conformed with

All of the yielding subjects underestimated the frequency with which they conformed. Asch also considered which aspect of the majority was most influential—the size of the majority or its unanimity? The experiment was then modified by adding between one to 15 persons in opposition to the individual. The results showed a clear trend; with just one in opposition there was little change in answers. When the opposition increased to two the pressure suddenly became substantial with subjects accepting wrong answers 13.6 percent of the time.

The experiment conducted by students in a social psychology class, used the same method that Milgram used to show how people conform to a group. The study found similar results to Milgram’s study, although it was conducted on a smaller campus with less people. Being that the outcome of the experiment was similar to the results of most other studies on conformity, it reinforced the idea that a group easily influences people. Based on the results of the previous studies mentioned above, it was hypothesized that more students and faculty passing by a crowd would conform when the crowd was

What effects does someone’s opinion have on yours? In other words, in a crossroad situation with a group setting, what happens when there is no authority and only social pressure? There is a strong urge to disagree with other group members in a group experiment, which is why The Asch Conformity experiment was conducted. It is told that social influences shape every persons belief and judgment. In simpler words, The Asch Conformity experiment is another example of how people are tempted to weaken in a group situation. Mary Henle, author of Documents of Gestalt Psychology gives a brief description of Asch’s experiment, in the 1950’s, subjects were placed in a room filled with actors. The conductor presented the subjects with an image showing

Studies have been conducted and poems have been written about our instinct to conform and how it could affect the future. Solomon E. Asch, a social psychologist, conducted one of these studies. The experiments, which examined a person’s responses when faced with social pressure, consisted of a group of people that were shown two cards: one with one line drawn on it and another card with 3 or more lines drawn on it. The subjects were to respond which line on the second card was the same length of the line on the first card. However, not all of the participants were actual subjects.

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

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.

Conformity is going along with one’s belief or actions, in a group a person can be influenced to become harmful and destructive. There are certain times where peaceful protesters can turn completely angry and enraged, due to partial members misunderstanding’s towards their change in views. Stanley Milgram and Solomon Asch both did major experiments exploring the true definition of individuals who will conform to the pressure of a group or a perceived authority. Stanley Milgram and Solomon Asch experiment also showed us how perfectly normal human being can be pressed into very unusual behavior by authority figures or the consensus of opinion around them.

The first study discussed is Asch’s conformity experiment designed to see if an individual would conform by giving a wrong answer in a simple eye exam due to social pressure. Asch drafted 50 male participants from Swarthmore College to undertake the vision test in small groups. The group consisted of one naïve participant and six confederate participants. The pseudo-participants agreed prior to the experiment to consistently give the wrong answers when presented with a line test. The line test consisted of four lines two of which were the same length the participants were asked to match the line that was the same length as the first line. Although the correct answer was obvious the participants gave there answers out loud with the naïve participant giving the answer last. Asch made variations on these experiments giving the naïve participant anonymity or an ally. In conclusion Asch’s experiments found that on average a 75 percent of naïve participants agreed with the answers of the group majority at least once. However, when given anonymity or an ally the rate of conformity drops (Asch, 1956).

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)

After Asch’s experiment was over, people began to analyze what this could mean for social psychology, thus it began a revolution of conformity tests. Milgram, Darley and Latané, and Stanford Prison Study all created a buzz around the terminology ‘bystander effect’ and what being part of a large mass of others will do to a person’s stance in social situations. A few psychologist will argue that people, when not given a specific responsibility will float among the crowd, allowing others to carry the weight . Then we have a few different opinions saying that people will actually perform better when others are present. Contributing factors that would challenge the individual to either conform or retaliate against the opposing force is the behavior of group(s), the impact of the situation, the social norms and roles, aggression within the group, and if they’re more caring and have that maternal or paternal instinct.