Compare And Contrast Counterculture And Subcultures

Looking at the big picture, subcultures and countercultures are both cultures that have their own values and norms. They are both capable of being a culture within a culture. A subculture is a smaller culture that exists within a larger culture but fit within the dominant culture, where as a counterculture is an opposition to the norms of society and contradict the dominant culture and norms. Both cultures dress and behave in different ways than average citizens of a society and are usually identifiable by their different appearances. A subculture can have its own beliefs, norms and values, but they are usually able to exist within mainstream culture. Their manners may be different enough to make them stand out, but they aren’t against society.

His experiment involved fifty male students who participated in a vision test. Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates. They are asked a series of questions and testers check to see if an individual who isn’t an actor conforms to the answers of the rest of the group. This was a way to analyze how often people go with what others are doing rather than stand out. One test involved holding a card with a line and comparing it to another card with more lines to guess what line was the same. He tested 50 people. The number of times each participant conformed to the majority view was measured, and on average, about 32% which is one third, of the participants in the situation conformed to the clear incorrect majority on the critical trials. In the control group, less than 1% of the participants gave the wrong answer. Therefore, he concluded that people conform for two main reasons, one being that they want to fit in the group, which is termed as normative influence. Another one being the fact that they believe the group is better informed than themselves, which is known as informational