Some reasons why powerful situations and a person 's conscience may influence a person’s behavior are because of situations of a moment, feeling pressured by others, and what someone might believe is an authority figure. Many circumstances can influence someone’s actions or thoughts, but one of the primary influences Ross and Nisbett write about in “The Power of Situations,” is the situations of a moment. Darley and Baston did an experiment on students in a religious seminary who were on their way to deliver a practice sermon, when suddenly they come across a man that was slumped on a doorway, asking for help. They questioned their readers to see what they believe John will do. Before anyone can make an assumption about what John’s response …show more content…
By contrast, if they were not in a hurry (because they had plenty of time before giving their sermon), about 63 percent of them helped” (qtd. in Ross and Nisbett). Not only can the situation itself have an influence on a person’s …show more content…
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
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
Social psychology is a scientific study that studies how people think, feel, and how they behave under the influence of other people (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2013, p. 2). Thinking about what social influence really means, we tend to think of a person who tries to persuade another person to acting a certain way. It can be a form of peer pressure, like taking that first puff of a cigarette, or it can be conforming to popular societal views, such as obeying the law of the land. Fiction is a great way to learn about social psychological perspectives. Watching popular theatrical films is the perfect way to learn because it illustrates the application of many perceptions within the subject of social psychology.
Comparative Analysis Obedience to authority and willingness to obey an authority against one’s morals has been a topic of debate for decades. Stanley Milgrim, a Yale psychologist, conducted a study in which his subjects were commanded by a person in authority to initiate lethal shocks to a learner; his experiment is discussed in detail in the article “The Perils of Obedience” (Milgrim 77). Milgrim’s studies are said to be the most “influential and controversial studies of modern psychology” (Levine). While the leaner did not actually receive fatal shocks, an actor pretended to be in extreme pain, and 60 percent of the subjects were fully obedient, despite evidence displaying they believed what they were doing was harming another human being (Milgrim 80). Likewise, Dr. Zimbardo, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, conducted an experiment, explained in his article “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” in which ten guards were required to keep the prisoners from escape and under control.
A man is running late to work one day when he passes by a homeless person asking for help. This man and many others usually consider this particular man to be generous, but since he is late, he ignores the homeless person and continues on his way. One can assume that if he had the time, he would have helped. Does that matter, though, seeing as in that situation, he did not in fact help? Scenarios like this supports Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett’s idea that it is the situation that influences a person’s behavior, not he or she’s individual conscience. Although a person’s individual conscience could play a part in how one behaves in a given scenario, ultimately, the “situational variable” has more impact on the actions of the person than he or she’s morals.
In examining the military history, one can easily find out that the main role of military leaders in the field is to decrease confusion and to guide units to achieve the desired end state. In accomplishing these tasks, Situational Understanding and Visualization have become necessary steps especially in today’s complex environment. This importance legitimates the question about their relationship between these two steps and the challenges facing leaders to achieve situational understanding and visualization. Commander’s visualization depends on Situational understanding. Leader’s success in these two phases remains conditioned by overcoming some challenges related to his bias, time and the efficiency of his staff.
The novel Of Mice and Men is also a perfect example of how obeying your conscience is hard. In the end of the novel, George has to face the fact that he has to take care of the problem that Lennie causes when he kills Curley's wife. George's conscience tells him exactly what to do and George knows what he has to do. In this example it is a little different. In other situations people would be afraid of what might happen after, however, in this situation George knows that he will be losing his best friend and in this situation it takes a tremendous amount of bravery to follow your conscience.
The teachers would initiate a “shock” to the student every time they got an answer wrong, but the teachers were unaware that the shock was fake. As the experiment continued, the shocks became more severe, and the students would plead for the teacher to stop since they were in pain. Despite the fact, that the participants continuously asked the authoritative experimenter if they could stop, “...relatively few people [had] the resources needed to resist authority” (Cherry 5). The participants feared questioning the effectiveness of the experiment, or restraining from continuing in fear of losing their job, going to jail, or getting reprimanded by Yale. A majority of the participants were intimidated by the experimenter, hence why they continued to shock the students, even though they knew morally, it was incorrect what they were doing. This experiment concluded, “...situational variables have a stronger sway than personality factors in determining obedience...” (5). One's decisions are based on the situation they are facing. If someone is under pressure, they will resort to illogical decision making. There thoughts could potentially be altered due to fear, or hostility. In conclusion, the rash, incohesive state of mind, provoked by fear will eventually lead to the rise of
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.
In the experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram, the power of authority over one’s personal conscience was laid bare. Subjects were asked to apply shocks to another person at increasing levels if questions were answered incorrectly. Although equipment was specious, 63% of the subjects followed through with the experiment and delivered the shocks at the highest intensity. “I was just following orders,'; was the excuse of many of the s...
These factors were situations and how people 's responses might change to fit different situations. In stress, people might turn to anger or grief while during peace and serenity they might turn to happiness or joy. Every person is capable of good and evil. Parker talks about another author’s example of a German policeman during the Holocaust that once disobeyed a superior order that was deemed morally objectionable (605). Not only did Parker bring up examples in other author 's works, but a question with concern to Milgram, which explores the possibility that people tend to do things because of where they are, not just because of who they are, and we are slow to see it, often times ignoring
Ethics are influence from many demographics which include family influences, peer influences, past experiences, religion, and situations. People decide whether something is ethical and whether or not it is right or wrong based on these influences. Individuals decide whether something is ethical or unethical based on family influences because people absorb about the ethical status or something family members based on how our families act. Also individuals also conduct their decisions based on peer influences because classmates and friends that surround us, usually impact a person’s believes on what is right or wrong overtime. Furthermore, people also resolve to their decisions on whether something is right or wrong established on past experiences because they predict their benefits on demographics that had happened to them in the past. Additionally, people select some decisions based on religion because a person’s religious beliefs will usually inspire he or she on what is right or wrong. Finally, another way people base their ethical decisions is based on the situations they are in because people sometimes change their beliefs depending on the circumstances they are in.
Solomon Asch’s experiment in “Opinions and Social Pressure” studied a subject’s ability to yield to social pressure when placed within a group of strangers. His research helped illustrate how groups encourage conformity. During a typical experiment, members of the group were asked by the experimenter to claim two obvious mismatched lines were identical. The single individual who was not privy to this information was the focal point of the experiment. Twelve out of eighteen times the unsuspecting individual went along with the majority, dispelling his beliefs in favor of the opinions of the group.
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.
Leaders are faced with different situations, work with people of varied abilities every day, and therefore have to adapt our leadership styles. This is fundamental when looking for a positive outcome. To understand the factors that influence leadership style, it is important to look at some examples of leadership styles.
This not only relates to the overall idea of the individual’s actions based on group influence but also alludes to the sub idea of the group of the classroom and how the individual does not want to be seen as lesser by giving a wrong answer. In doing this the group influences the individual to go along with the main idea of the group. In this experiment when given three lines to decide which one is more closely related to the original line it was found that the individual, that was part of the experimental group, would often pick the wrong answer to go along with the group (Baron, 2012). The influence stems from the group all choosing the wrong answer then the individual begins to believe that there is something wrong with the answer they had originally chosen due to the fact that the group overall has made a majority answer. The group itself can present tangible influence when they look to the individual to answer. That moment when the group looks toward the individual is where the influence becomes more concrete and the individual’s own beliefs begin to waiver because they believe that perhaps they are wrong and the group is correct