The Dangers Of Social Pressure

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.

Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and

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.

In social psychology, social influence is a process where someone’s beliefs, thoughts and behaviour change by being exposed to beliefs, thoughts and opinions of others. It manifests in several forms, such as obedience, compliance and conformity. All these types of social influence have been studied by numerous researchers who investigated the reasons why people conform to social norms and obey to authorities, such as Milgram’s classic studies on obedience. His experiments support the popular idea of ‘banality of evil’ –Hannah Arendt (1963)’s famous phrase referring to the capability to accomplish dreadful things out of banal reasons–, revealing that people conform submissively and thoughtlessly to the orders that authorities deliver, no

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

The two studies being analyzed today are the Stanly Milgram experiment and the Slater experiment. The two similar experiments yielded information about obedience to authority that explains the correlation in society between authority, obedience, and morality. Despite the major ethical problems in the Milgram experiment, it is known in social psychology today that human beings will follow orders from authority figures even to the extent of inflicting harm on another. However, even with this fact, it is also known that there is limits to such obedience.

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

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

The subject Gretchen Brand, when asking about the well-being of the victim, was quickly shut down by the experimenter’s cold voice which urged him to continue (Milgram, 1976). Not only was authority involved in how the subject obeyed, but the experimenter's language and urgency allowed the man to continue. This is because obeying authority, regardless of who they are, is a social norm. Social norms are an accepted way of thought emphasized by a community as being the right thing to do (Bocchiaro & Zamperini, 2012). They tell people how to react to society and certain situations; people tend to develop a consensus when they are in a group about what the right thing to do is at certain times (Bocchiaro,etc, 2012). People obey because they conform to these norms, not only because it is their nature to do so but also because it is a normal thing in

This paper explores seven peer-reviewed articles that analyze the Milgram Experiment and its results on people’s obedience to authority. The articles range from describing the experiment’s origins to analyzing factors that went into the participant’s compliance such as Strain Resolving Mechanisms (SRMs) and pressure binding factors (BFs), and additionally, finding trends in personality that correlate with levels of obedience. In the first official trial, 65% of participants had agreed to press all the buttons in a shock machine that they were led to believe would administer a deadly shock to another person (Russell 2011). This paper analyzes what led to such an infamous high percentage, what it reveals about the human psychology, and how it can apply to the current day.

Many times we are given commands or orders from a higher authority or power some of which we do not agree with or follow. This is because we use our moral values and human emotions to determine whether they were right or wrong. But there is a time where we may judge and not agree while others may not pass a judgment and be in agreement. In the study of Psychology we look to a researchers finding to prove the way we respond to emotional, environmental and societal changes. Stanley Milgram a researcher that set out on the behalf of Yale University conducted a study to determine how obedient

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.

Stanley MIlgram is a Yale University social psychologist who wrote “Behavioral Study of Obedience”, an article which granted him many awards and is now considered a landmark. In this piece, he evaluates the extent to which a participant is willing to conform to an authority figure who commands him to execute acts that conflict with his moral beliefs. Milgram discovers that the majority of participants do obey to authority. In this research, the subjects are misled because they are part of a learning experience that is not about what they are told. This experiment was appropriate despite this. Throughout the process, subjects are exposed to various signs that show them

In pyschology conformity can be descibed as an indiviual’s tendency to follow the unspoken rules or behaviours of the social group to which he/she belongs to or wants to be apart of. Many psychologists including , Jenness (1932), Sherif (1935) both experimented in psychology, investigating conformity and group pressure. However, perhaps the most famous conformity experiment was done by Solomon Asch (1951) and his line judgment experiment. (McLeod 2007)