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Strengths of social comparison theory
Strengths of social comparison theory
Strengths of social comparison theory
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Group Pressure In 1951, Solomon Asch fulfilled a very famous experiment in the psychology world. Asch conducted an experiment in group pressure to achieve conformity, Stark’s quoted “Can group pressure cause us to deny the obvious, even physical evidence?”. Do we believe that we are able to hold on our opinions when everyone else are disagreeing with us?. Solomon Asch answered all these questions in his experiment. He tested 50 people in his experiment and 75% chose to not stick with their own opinions and follow others. I disagree with indicating strangers as a weak group, but being around friends will make it stronger. Based on my own experience, dealing with friends is much easier than strangers. At the end, group pressure showed that a high number of people wont stick to their beliefs, but instead will do the opposite by following others beliefs. Solomon Asch’s experiment began by stating 8 participants including the reader …show more content…
The experiment made on visual perception. The experiment placed two large cards, one of the card indicated one single vertical line , and the second card indicated three vertical lines in a different length. Asch’s experiment asked the participant to choose one line from the second card that matches the length of the line in the first card. Seven participants chose the a different line than the reader chose, which made the reader stop and think more. this stated that group pressure may deny what you physically see because of others. The seven participant were paid by Asch to state a different answers than yours to create the group pressure. The experiment showed that a high number of participant will conform even in a week group
So, to test this, they had two people, one person would be giving shocks to the other under the orders of Milgram. In order to receive these shocks the person had to incorrectly answer a pattern of words the tester had to previously memorize. The experimenter wanted to see if the participant would go until he said to stop, and if they would obey an authority figure no matter if it meant hurting someone. During this experiment the person getting the test done was, in fact, not getting shocked what so ever. But, the participant was not informed of this. They had a recording of the
He enlisted forty participants and told them that they would be taking part in a study on the effects of punishment on learning. When they showed up to the testing site, they met with an experimenter and a confederate, Mr. Wallace, who they were led to believe was another participant in the study, just like them. As part of the experiment, it was determined that the participants would act as the “teacher” and Mr. Wallace would take on the role of the “learner”. The procedure the participants had to follow was straightforward; they were to read Mr. Wallace a list of paired words, and then through a series of multiple choice questions, test his memory. If he answered the question correctly, the participants moved on; however, if he got it incorrect, they were to administer him a shock, by pressing the indicated switches on the shock generator, with the shocks increasing by fifteen volts with each incorrect answer. As the shocks increase, Mr. Wallace begins to exhibit more and more signs of distress, asking for the study to end, and even making complaints of a heart condition. Despite his hesitance, the participants continued with the experiment because of the urging of the experimenter; if the participant remarked that they wanted to stop or check on the learner, the experimenter urged them by remarking “it is absolutely essential that you continue” or “you have no other choice; you must go on” (Kassin,
In class, we learned about Asch’s conformity studies and how people tend to yield to the group surrounding/ and or majority of the group, and this experiment was done through the line test. In the movie, they jury first
Everyone unconsciously follows the crowd and obeys until one person steps out to help then they all help. With obedience to authority it’s the same thing of feeling like you have to obey even though what you could be doing is inhumane or hurtful to others. Both of these experiments show people looking to follow and feeling as if they have to conform and do what they are being told whether it be an unconscious/ silent agreement or a spoken
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
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
The astute reader may notice that this review does not include any papers that did not find a false consensus effect. The reason for this is not that this paper is not representative of the literature, but rather, that it is. The uniformity of the literature suggests that the phenomenon is fairly common. Some interesting arguments as to why this is are motivational or cognitive in nature. The motivational premise is based in the idea that people are motivated to believe that they have a place in their social environment. This argument is a based in self-justification, in that if many people share a given belief or behavior, it makes it easier to justify that this attitude or behavior is either right, or not as bad as it might seem.
The Asch and Milgram’s experiment were not 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 detail of the experiment and inflicting unwarranted stress Asch and Milgram’s were
In the experiment, the group of individuals that were heavily influenced that their judgement was poor had no choice but to join the group’s decision despite having opposing views. Similarly, Eric Forman had to stop attending his disco roller-skating events because his friend group was totally against it. Lastly, Varun ended up telling his girlfriend he cheated because his respect from the group was on the line. All in all, this theory that people have to listen to other individual’s opinions to grade their worth has become obvious through these
The most basic concept in social psychology is conformity. Conformity is the idea that behaviour or a belief is changed in order to follow, or conform, to what is considered the “norm.” One of the oldest experiments to support this notion was conducted in 1935 by Muzafer Sherif (Song, Ma, Wu, Li, 2012 p. 1366). There are two different types of
Asch’s Conformity Procedure was where participants were presented with a set of lines. In one case a single line and the other a trio of lines. The participant’s task was simply to find which line in the trio of lines matches the single line in length. When looking at the lines, there is only one line of the trio lines that obviously matches the single line. What Asch did was put participants in groups of collaborators, the actors, to turn in a specific answer. He did this so that the collaborators would give their answers first and then the participant who thinks he’s just one of the participants like the rest gives their answer. What concluded through this experimented was that if you have collaborators systematically giving the wrong answer, then majority of the people will give the wrong answer. (Meyers 158) The peer pressures created by a large group are such that the individual comes to decision radically different from the decision ...
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.
As stated above, conformity changes an individual 's belief and behaviour to match the groups, and while obedience often requires punishment and reward other studies suggest that "an individual...confronted with an authority recognized as legitimate, will behave in the direction of the expectations of this authority" (Pascual et al., 2013) without long-term effect on behaviour or beliefs. Sherif (as cited by Myers, 2014) found in his studies on norm formation that the group norm lasted even a year after the initial experiments, while Milgram (as cited by Myers, 2014) found physical proximity of the authority figure was a predictor of obedience in that obedience went down the further the authority figure physically was. Though conformity and obedience are not completely different, conformity obedience can be interchangeable when the hierarchy is seen as a group with which individuals can identify. Reicher, Haslam and Smith (2012) argue that Milgram 's (1965, 1974) famous obedience experiment isn 't simply blind obedience but individuals identifying with the figure of authority and conforming to expected norms. In some cases when individuals felt the authority figure 's beliefs were dissimilar to their own they immediately withdrew from
Asch initiated his experiment by making one of the particpants at ease. He asked a serious of elementary questions where the four confederates answered them correctly so the fifth person also answered the question correct. This in sense gave the participant a false interpretation of the actual thinking behind Asch true experiment. The participants were asked to compare, identify and match one of three lines on the right card to the length of the line on the left card. This task was repeated several times to get a true picture of the data collated.
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