student
English 105 ABR Summary Final Draft
Adam J. Lehner
In “Opinions and Social Pressure” Solomon Asch argues that although there are instances where people will choose to be independent in their opinions, many choose to conform to the majority for the purpose of avoiding insecurity faced by social pressure.
Asch’s experiment consisted of a group of college students gathered for a visual judgment evaluation. He told them that the purpose was to compare the lengths of vertical lines on two white cards, one showing the constant line to be matched, and the other showing three separate lines for comparison. The subjects were told to give their opinions out loud, in the order that they had been seated. What one of the subjects was unaware of is that they were the one that the experiment was based on. The other participants were confederates of Asch, giving deliberate incorrect answers. The subject was seated one seat from the last position so that they could hear most of the participants’ answers, therefore being influenced by the majority of the group. When the confederates disagreed with the subject, Asch states, “He looks surprised, indeed incredulous, about the disagreement” (Asch, 656).
Each of the 123 subjects had been placed in 18 rounds of questioning, 12 of which had been predetermined by the experimenters to be answered unanimously incorrectly by confederates. Of these subjects, 75% of them changed their answers to the majority vote at least once. When under the influence of peer pressure, the subjects accepted the majority and conformed 36.8% of the time. The individual tests differed quite a lot, with some of the subjects conforming once or twice and some who conformed to majority most of the time. 25% of the individuals who partook in the experiment did not conform at all, showing that they weren’t worried about their self-doubt, and were confident to their personal judgment.
Many variables within the experiment made the conformity rate fluctuate.
Adam J. Lehner
In “Opinions and Social Pressure” Solomon Asch argues that although there are instances where people will choose to be independent in their opinions, many choose to conform to the majority for the purpose of avoiding insecurity faced by social pressure.
Asch’s experiment consisted of a group of college students gathered for a visual judgment evaluation. He told them that the purpose was to compare the lengths of vertical lines on two white cards, one showing the constant line to be matched, and the other showing three separate lines for comparison. The subjects were told to give their opinions out loud, in the order that they had been seated. What one of the subjects was unaware of is that they were the one that the experiment was based on. The other participants were confederates of Asch, giving deliberate incorrect answers. The subject was seated one seat from the last position so that they could hear most of the participants’ answers, therefore being influenced by the majority of the group. When the confederates disagreed with the subject, Asch states, “He looks surprised, indeed incredulous, about the disagreement” (Asch, 656).
Each of the 123 subjects had been placed in 18 rounds of questioning, 12 of which had been predetermined by the experimenters to be answered unanimously incorrectly by confederates. Of these subjects, 75% of them changed their answers to the majority vote at least once. When under the influence of peer pressure, the subjects accepted the majority and conformed 36.8% of the time. The individual tests differed quite a lot, with some of the subjects conforming once or twice and some who conformed to majority most of the time. 25% of the individuals who partook in the experiment did not conform at all, showing that they weren’t worried about their self-doubt, and were confident to their personal judgment.
Many variables within the experiment made the conformity rate fluctuate.
Cited: Asch, Solomon. “Opinions and Social Pressures.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum Twelfth Edition. Eds: Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2013. 655-659. Print.