The Importance Of Social Interaction

In 1932, Jenness conducted the first study of conformity. The experiment was ambiguous as there was no right or wrong answer. The study focused on the participants' estimates on the number of beans in a bottle. Firstly, Jenness asked his participants to individually estimate the number of beans. He then gathered the group and got them to examine the contents. Finally, the researcher once again asked individuals for an estimate and observed that nearly all the individuals changed their original estimates to be closer to the group estimate, therefore showing a level of conformity.

Why is teaching Social Communication important? Social Communication is the basis of how humans interact with each other. Without social skills, the ability to build relationships with others would not exist. Being a social outlet for children, school offers students a unique opportunity to practice their social skills, but for students who struggle, school can have a negative impact on their academic success (Ostmeyer and Scarpa, 2012). In School there is a presumed set of skills that students are required to learn and follow. Some of these skills that teachers find essential are listening to others, following steps, staying calm, taking responsibility for one’s behavior and doing nice things for others. To many, these skills may require a little thought, but to children with social deficits, these skills could be a continuous obstacle. “Thus, an environment that necessitates social communication as a method of learning could lead to academic underperformance” (Ostmeyer, Scarpa, 2012, pp. 933).

After World War II, Kurt Lewin became interested in the topic of conformity. Due to his research, many other social psychologists such as: Milgram, Asch, Darley, and Latané began to conduct research on conformity. Based on a study conducted by Stanley Milgram, an observational study was conducted at Elizabethtown College in order to replicate the findings of Milgram’s experiment.

One of the first empirical studies to illustrate conformity was conducted by Jeness (1932) where he asked individual students to estimate the number of beans in a bottle and discuss it to arrive at a group estimate. When they were asked

Social structures and cultures are founded upon social interactions. By interacting with one another, people design rules, institutions and systems within which they seek to live. Symbols are used to communicate the expectations of a given society to those new to it, either children or outsiders. Through this broad schema of social development, one sees how social interaction lies at its core.

Social proof also occurs when a person is unaware of how to act or behave, and so they mimic how other people act because they feel that the other person’s behavior is more accurate than theirs. The three situations informational social influence can happen are when a situation is ambiguous; there is a crisis; or when a person lacks information and so they turn to another for guidance or seek knowledge (usually a person with more knowledge and expertise). Humans are not the only species that partake in informational social influence, a study was shown that chimpanzees’ use informational social influence to share new techniques and behaviors. Informational social influence can lead not only to compliance but to private acceptance where the person believes the information given to them is correct. In 1935, Muzafer Sherif conducted a social psychology experiment with the intention to prove that people conform under group pressure when put in unclear/ambiguous situations. (Goodman, H. 2003) In contrast to Asch’s social psychology experiment, rather than using a classroom to study how group pressure can cause conformity, Sherif conducted a lab experiment which was called the auto-kinetic effect experiment. Sherif used a visual illusion called the Autokinetic effect where a light was projected on a screen

In this specific experiment, we can see how group pressure can affect our mental process and our behavior. Knowing how our brain works can help us understand why we respond a certain way. What the conformity experiment was trying to show was how likely an individual is to give into society’s ideals and beliefs, without questioning, out of fear of being ostracized or because they believe that the group is better informed. With this experiment, we can understand the reason why our behavior and mental processes can

What do these studies show us about people, and their reasons for conforming? I believe that the individual's desire to be correct plays a key role in this type of conformity. People often rely on social cues around them, in a given situation, when making judgements. In a group situation, like that in the Sherif experiment, if an individual is unsure about something they will look at the judgements of others in order to determine the correct response. According to Blanton and Christie people

Social groups are very important. In the text book we learn about two different experiments. The Asch experiment includes a group of students asking to compare two cards and to choose something on the card that matches the second card. Many people in the experiment matched it correctly. Also there were people that would constantly match the wrong ones on purpose. The purpose of the experiment was to recognize if any of the participants of the experiment felt awkward during it. First of all they felt pressured to answer correctly. Often when you are in a group of people you don’t know you want to be as smart as you can.

Sherif (1936) conducted a study on conformity. This experiment tested how people were influenced by others in their perception and judgement of the autokinetic effect. Sherif concluded that people when judging an ambiguous stimulus will rely upon others to resolve uncertainty – shared norms were created. Participants tend to compromise and change their opinion to resemble others in the group. Similarly, Asch (1951) carried out an experiment with not ambiguous stimulus – with an apparent, correct answer to a line judgement task. However, this experiment reached the same conclusions – even though, the answer was obviously wrong, participants were influenced by other group members and tend to conform to a majority. 76.4% of naïve participants gave a wrong answer in at least one of the 12 trials. Asch (1951) concluded that people tend to conform because of the normative influence -

In 1932, Jenness became the first psychologist to study conformity, which involved an experiment with basic materials and little ethical treatment (Jenness). The participants were asked to examine a jar of beans. They were then told to make an estimate of how many beans were inside of the jar. The participants were not informed of intentions of the study, thus full consent was invalid. When they were exposed to the estimates of other participants before making an individual guess, most participants’ estimations differed from the norm, and a shift occurred from the first estimates to the cluster of numbers within the pool of peer responses. This result led Jenness to form the idea of informational conformity,

The belief that conformity is nonexistent in humans is an impractical concept that is illogical. In fact, this idea was disproved by a psychologist, Solomon Asch, in his experiment commonly referred to as the Asch Paradigm in which he hired a group, consisting of five to ten people, and a person to ask questions regarding four lines. Only one person, who went last in answering, in the group did not have any previous knowledge of the experiment and was not a payed actor. The experiment itself consisted of these four

One of the dangers of collectivism is its ability to suffocate an individual’s ideas in order for the ideas of the rest of group to survive. In the early 1950s, Solomon E. Asch conducted a series of experiments to test the effect of peer pressure on the individual. A group of young men was gathered and everyone except for the individual being tested was told to give the wrong answer. The individual was asked to match the length of two lines, but under peer pressure “even when the difference between the lines was seven inches, there were still some who yielded to the error of the majority” (Asch 730). Despite knowing that the answer the group gave was wrong, the individual still said the wrong answer. He does this because while he knows that group answer is wrong, he also

Doris Lessing’s article “Group Minds,” discusses the impact of group conformity, and how it not only affects the community, but individualism as well. Lessing points out how people’s mentality and thinking patterns change if they are included in a group. Similar to Lessing’s story of the experiment with the sticks, Solomon E. Asch describes a college scenario using white cards and black lines, where both the situations have a vast majority of people standing together to do what they are told and saying the wrong answer, while the few students who have the correct answer uphold this answer until they soon “yield to the majority” (599). Doris Lessing describes this act of complying with society as “obey[ing] the atmosphere” because they are following

The human ability to interact could be classified as the distinguishing factor between us and other species. Not only does our ability to interact allow us to communicate our thoughts, feelings and ideas in a way that no other species can, it also enables us to help one another with our development and progress. In this essay I am going to discuss how interaction, with both people and the environment, can help develop both our social and cognitive functioning.