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The Asch Conformity Experiment was an experiment conducted in 1951 by Solomon Asch. Asch believed that group influence would cause someone to agree to something even though they know that it is obviously incorrect. This assumption is called conformity. In 1951, Asch decided that he wanted to test his hypotheses so he gathered a group of male college students from Swarthmore college. He asked them to simply match the length of the lines that was presented to them. The task was quite simple. Each individual had to announce which of the 3 lines on the left matched the reference line on the right. Every participant; but one, was told to give the right answer for the first couple of rounds and then purposely give the wrong answer to see if everyone
It often leads to people adjusting responses to stimuli just because they believe that if everyone else has the same response they must have it too. This is shown in "Asch Experiment" after McLeod explained how the dot of light never moved, he mentioned, "The participants are then asked to estimate how far the dot of light moves. These estimates are made out loud, and with repeated trials, each group of three converges on an estimate. The main finding of the study was that groups found their own "social norm" of perception." (McLeod 2) This shows that when placed in an environment where some people have a different opinion than others, the popular opinion takes over and everyone's opinion becomes uniform because people doubt themselves when they are alone on an opinion, leading to conformity. People in environments like this should try to keep their own opinions as to prevent the spread of conformity when uniqueness is
Alcoholism is as prevalent in my family, as blood is in our veins. When previously asked to observe 12-step groups, I ritualistically flocked to Alcoholics Anonymous, without consideration of the possibility that other groups had any potential to make an impact on me. I always pride myself in my ability to identify as an individual that is not ensnared in alcoholism, but unfortunately am an individual that was highly tormented by alcoholism. Through observation of the group and how it processed, as well as identifying how I felt as a new attendee, I was able to understand why self-help, support groups are so vital for individuals in recovery. I finally realized, I too am in recovery.
As well as for having the people around them respond to a question differently than their answer. These situations can have a person feeling doubtful of themselves and feeling like they have to change their answers to conform to the majority of people’s responses. Asch informs his readers on an experiment concentrated on the influence of group pressures upon individuals, that he conducted himself. His experiment involved a group of young men, all in college who gathered together to compare the lengths of lines. All subjects were displayed two cards, one with a black single standard line and another card which had three lines with various lengths, and every individual had to answer which line was the same as on the other card (598). He explains that if one other person answers a question differently than the dissenter, it causes the dissenter to doubt and rethink about the choice they made. Asch describes that when a person contradicts the subjects answer, the subject was influenced a little with the confrontation, but continued to answer independently, and when it was two people contradicting the subject’s answer, the subject “accepted the wrong answer 13.6 per cent of the time.” But when it was more than two people, “the subjects’ errors jumped to 31.8 per cent” (Asch 600). He says “The dissenter becomes more and more worried and hesitant as the disagreement continues in succeeding trials; he may
Stanley Milgram in 1963 decided to do a sociological experiment that tested peoples devotion to authority. How far would people go if an authority figure ordered them to? Milgram took a random sample, meaning he took random people to take part in his experiment. He did so to get a generalized overview of the American population. These random people were to take part in one of the most influential social experiment in history. It still inspires sociologists to try experiments close to Milgrams to see not only if they get the same results today but also to find out how far people with go to follow their commanding figure.
Asch and Milgram’s experiment was unethical in their methods of not informing the participant of the details surrounding the experiment and the unwarranted stress; their experiment portrayed the circumstances of real life situation surrounding the issues of obedience to authority and social influence. In life, we are not given the courtesy of knowledge when we are being manipulated or influenced to act or think a certain way, let us be honest here because if we did know people were watching and judging us most of us would do exactly as society sees moral, while that may sound good in ensuring that we always do the right thing that would not be true to the ways of our reality. Therefore, by not telling the participants the details of the experiment and inflicting unwarranted stress, Asch and Milgram’s replicated the reality of life. In “Options and Social Pressure” Solomon E. Asch conducts an experiment to show the power of social influence, by using the lengths of sticks that the participants had to match up with the best fit, Asch then developed different scenarios to see how great the power of influence is, but what he discovered is that people always conformed to the majority regardless of how big or small the error was the individual always gave in to the power of the majority.
The Milgram obedience experiment began in July of 1961. The experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. The experiment was met to measure the willingness of participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform an experiment that was against their moral views. Milgrams participants for his experiments were from all backgrounds. The subjects ranged from college graduates to people that had not finished grade school. (Milgram’s Experiment on Obedience to Authority)
The most basic concept in social psychology is conformity. Conformity is the idea that behaviour or a belief is changed in order to follow, or conform, to what is considered the “norm.” One of the oldest experiments to support this notion was conducted in 1935 by Muzafer Sherif (Song, Ma, Wu, Li, 2012 p. 1366). There are two different types of
Another conformity experiment is the “smoke-filled room” experiment which depends on the pressure individuals feel in a situation where they may stand out of the group. The experiment is first conducted in a room set up for a discussion between...
Perrin, S., & Spencer, C. (1981). Independence or conformity in the Asch experiment as a reflection of cultural and situational factors. British Journal of Social Psychology, 20,
2. Conformity, as studied by Solomon Asch, refers to one’s insecurities of themselves which leads to the final result of agreeing with others, even though they did not agree initially, as well as behaving similarly. Asch experimented with college students, and he had the students compare lines to the general, standard line. When answering alone, the answers given proved correct, but when other people answered aloud before the students, they quickly began to doubt themselves and more often than not, they changed their answers.
Conformity can be seen as the influence that creates a change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with the current social norms. Arthur Jenness was the first psychologist to study the idea of conformity with his study involving beans and a glass bottle. His study was to see if individual participants would change their answer once in a group setting with more people discussing their thought on how many beans could be in the glass bottle. Jenness found that nearly everyone had changed their answer and that each group changed their amount on average from 250-380 beans. He discovered that social influence can create this sense of conformity because participants may have believed that their guess with the group was better than their own individual guess. The significance of this concept is that it helps explain why people change to become a certain aspect of society or to fit in with at least one group of people. This includes the people who say that they do not conform with modern day society, they are conforming to one group none the
In society, there are specific standards that we hold up throughout our culture. These are the basis off of what we live. These are based on a general consensus of what are expected and accepted as normal actions in society. Some examples of social norms include but are not limited to, chewing with your mouth closed, saying please and thank you, driving on the correct side of the road, etc. The social norm proposed in this experiment was privacy and personal space. Have you ever been to a super market and thought someone was following you around? Or gone to a mall, and thought you saw the same person in every store you went to?
Students were completely devoted to his experiment, suggesting additional rules they should follow to form part of The Wave. They established a uniform to eliminate class distinction, as well as, a salute and symbol to further unite as a group. Whereas in ordinary circumstances many students would have rejected these new social norms, under group pressure they decided to accept the majority’s judgement. This provides an example of conformity, whereby individuals adjust their beliefs, attitudes and behaviours in ways that are consistent with the norms of the group (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). One of the main reasons people conform is because they have the desire to be accepted by the majority (Deutsch & Gerard, 1995). This is demonstrated in Asch’s (1955) study where participants were asked to decide which of the three lines had the same length as the standard line. All members of the group except one were confederates and were instructed beforehand to give wrong answers in most trials (Asch, 1955). The results show that when individuals perform this task independently they tend to be accurate almost all the time. Whereas in the presence of the group people conform on average one third of the time with the majority’s decision (Asch, 1955). Similarly, students conform to the social norms of The Wave, despite their beliefs, attitudes and behaviours being obviously wrong. Many of these students were
Jenness’ experiment was ambiguous, which means that there was no right or wrong answer. The study focused on the participant’s estimates on the total number of beans in a bottle. Jenness asked each participant, individually, an estimate on how much beans were in the bottle. Jenness then grouped the participants together, and asked the participants to provide him with just one estimate. The researcher once again asked individual participants for an estimate and found that nearly all participants changed their original estimate, which was changed to a closer estimate to the group estimate. Therefore this showed a level of conformity.
Asch experiment also creates a moral dilemma for the participants. This moral dilemma is indicated by an agreement to the majority position, which is either brought about by a desire to fit in or the desire to be correct, or just to conform to social role. Individuals also tend to conform because the individual is sacred of being rejecting by its peers and accept the views of the peers to fit in. In short, the experiment conducted by Asch measured the degree conform was imbedded into the individual or whether conformity is easy to learn or