The Asch Conformity Experiment

In chapter 6 I learned more on how social influence impacts our everyday relations. There are three levels of social influence and they are by conformity, compliance and obedience. The first section talks about conformity, and it is the lowest level because we voluntarily adapt our behavior to match others. Now there are two variations or reasons outlined by the book to conform to those around us and they are “normative social influence,” and “informational social influence”. The former is our response to feel a greater sense of belonging in the group while the second deals more with us trying to be right by sometimes going with what others say to be right too.

Conformity is very important to society. Many people conform every day. Conformity is important because it brings people together. Among the Hidden, in this story we see people conforming because of the situation they are in. Society encourages conformity through higher level people, social groups, and media.

The other type on conformity is called informational influence. People assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. This may work wonderful in a beehive where there are thousands of other bees with the same mindset. The Problem with this in today 's society can be explained with the simple Solomon Asch

The Milgram experiment and the society Speaking of one of the most renowned psychological experiment, which even replications on TV are done, is the Milgram experiment, on obedience to authority figures. It involves the measurement of how much participants will to obey the authority, in order to explain the reason why soldiers obeyed to allow the Holocaust, the homicides of millions of Jews, happened. With the participants’ roles as a teacher to punish a learner by incrementing degrees of electric shocks, though they didn’t know it’s staged, 65% of them did it to the last under the horrendous moans and the commands of the experimenters, which surpassed the expectation of 1.2%. Milgram himself elaborated two theories, encompassing theory of

Merriam-Webster defines conformity as, “action in accordance with some specified standard or authority” (Merriam-Webster). With this definition in mind, one may discover that it is quite easy to conform into a society ridden with cliques of people and individuals that have similar interest as oneself. Although it may be easier to conform, conformity prevents the surrounding society from growth, inevitably making the society and its people horrendously boring and incapable of being a working individual in the stated society. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s “Harrison Bergeron”, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” written by Joyce Carol Oates, and “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden all vaguely discuss the necessity of individualism, understanding

Subjects always showed deep, shocking disapproval his objection face, and others denounced the experiment terming it as senseless and stupid. Despite the denunciation from some subject, the majority had to compile with the commands. The understanding of this phenomenon is that obedience rest of the particular conditions analysis that it occurs. While the experimenter demands have the scientific authority nature, the victim demands spring from his personal pain and suffering experience.

Firstly, a norm is defined as rules that regulate social life, including explicit laws and implicit cultural standards. This relates to the particular experiment because the whole point was to break one of these norms and see the ripple effect it had on the people around me. Another term is attitude, which is defined as a relatively stable opinion containing beliefs and emotional feelings about a topic. This has to do with the experiment because My mother, who had the biggest reaction when I broke the norm, and I have different attitudes when it comes to proper etiquette and it is something that is apparent in our behaviors when out and my mother’s role in trying to make me conform to being proper when in public. Going off of that, conformity is defined as the tendency people have to act and think like members of the group.

The Asch Conformity Experiments were conducted to measure conformity in a randomized group of people. These experiments uncovered that at least 75% of participants went along with the rest of the group at least one time, even if the answer was wrong. Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, is a story about a dystopian society. In this society firemen do not save burning buildings, instead they are the ones who burn books and houses. This is in order to promote the conformity of citizens.

“One time I saw a tiny Joshua sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. ‘You’d be destroying what makes it special,’ she said.

Breaking a norm is like an experiment. You are never going to know what the outcome is going to be. A lot of sociologist like to see it as a social experiment, and the reason is because people are living their life what is considered the right way. It’s a mimicry, everyone doing the same thing, following the same rules, avoiding everything that is not considered normal, usual, typical, and even standard. For my social experiment, I decided that my norm violation would be saying “I love you” when ending a conversation.

Conformity is a form of social influence which is the changing someone’s beliefs, feelings, attitudes, and even changes their behavior based off of what someone says or does. In today’s society

(Social Psychology) Solomon Asch Conformity experiment was conducted to see the extent that people would conform. The experiment

Why do we conform? Take time to carefully consider each question being asked below and respond in well developed, complete sentences. Definitions: Social Norm: expectations about what behavior, thoughts, or feelings are appropriate within a given group, within a given context Conformity: yielding to, or “going along with,” a perceived social norm. Is conformity a good thing, or a bad thing? Why?

When we are in a group, whatever the group thinks we will one third of the times go along with. “Why did most subjects conform so readily? When they were interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed or thought "peculiar." A few of them said that they really did believe the group 's answers were correct (Solomon Asch Conformity Experiment). ”

however, large majority ended up changing to face the back of the elevator age can predict conformity; younger (youngest) to conform more often (more than 40% of the time), whilst the oldest are least likely to conform (14-24% depending on if they are middle-aged adult or late-age adult - respectively) men are more likely to conform fully, while women showed higher numbers of partial conformity Asch Experiment; subjects told they were participating in a perceptual experiment participants were each placed in a room with 7 “confederates” who were actually actors acting as to be also participants cards were shown to all the participants in their respective groups (with actors) and the participants were seated in a certain way so they would answer last (after each actor in their group) for the first two trials, the actors (everyone) answered correctly - with the most obvious answer after these two trials, they began to experiment whether the participant would also follow them (purposely giving obviously ‘wrong’ answers) subjects tend to follow their groups’ opinion due to ‘group pressure’ a majority of participants that participated (as the subject), tend to ‘follow’ the majority of the group → following their answers, despite knowing that the answer is obviously