Danielle Bérubé ENG 213
Short essay #1
Opinions and Social Pressure
Social Psychologist Solomon E. Asch wrote an article called "Opinions and
Social Pressure," his goal was to discover the influence a group has on an
Individual with a "series of simple but ingenious experiments on the influence of
group pressure upon the individual." Group pressure is common in our society, it
is important that scientists research the process of opinions and the fuction of
social circumstances.
Solomon Asch and his associates wanted to find out how group pressure
affects individuals by experimenting with a group of seven to nine college men.
They compare the length of a single line to three other lines and match it to the
single line. Everyone gives their answers in the order of where they are seated.
On the first two trials everyone has a common answer but on the third trial, one
person disagrees with the rest of the group. He continues to give his answers
and they continue to be different from the rest of the group, " he may pause
before announcing his answer and speak in a low voice, or he may smile in an
embarrassed way" affirms Asch. The reason why there is only one person that
disagrees with the rest of the group is because he is the main subject, the others
were told to give the wrong answers to see how the subject would react in
minority, he will either stick to his opinion or succumb to the pressure of the
group.
Asch modified his experiment by changing the amout of people in the group,
when there was only two people in the group, the subject stated the right answer
without any doubt. By adding a third person, the subject agreed 13.6 per cent of
the time with the false answer, and by adding a fourth person, his wrong answers
went up to 31.8 per cent. Also, by adding a "truthfull partner", there was now less
presure on the subject, he answered falsely "one forth as often as under
pressure of a unanimous majority. " Asch decided to see what would happen if
the subject lost his partner, at a specific time during the trials, his partner had to
leave for an appointment. The subject answered the questions incorrectly but
less than when his partner agreed with the majority.
When supported by another person, the target feels less pressure to agree
with the majority, but if alone, he will answer incorrectly. Solomon E. Asch
provides many examples on how social pressure is common in our lives. He
supports each experiment with statistics that prove to us that it is easier forget
our own opinion to follow a group.
I had a hard time reading this article, the termilogy was a little advance. It
could also be that I’m not used to reading articles about psychology with a lot of
statistics. The article was good, I agree with his work and experiments, it was
very detailed with numerous examples. Next time I will chose a different article,
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