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As humans, one of the most frequent instinctive activities that we partake in is socializing. Our lives revolve around socializing with other people in our society in order to satisfy our many needs. In order for everyone’s needs to be met, we must all work together as a group. In society, there are many different types of groups that influence all types of different aspects of our lives. These groups are very influential throughout our lives because they influence as well as alter our views, choices and other factors of our lives on a daily basis. In groups, members of the group might have opinions that differ from one another. This often leads to a term known as groupthink. Groupthink, which was coined by psychologist Irving Janis, is when “members of a group ignore information that goes against the group consensus”(Chambliss and Eglitis, 2016). Even if a member of a group has a different opinion on a decision, the group as a whole will decide to ignore it and go through with the original decision that was made instead. Conformity is when choices, laws or rules are carried out uniformly by the member of a group because of the “unspoken pressure to conform to the …show more content…
An actor in another room was to memorize and repeat the words that were heard. Whenever the actor intentionally failed to memorize one of the given words, he would receive a shock of electricity from the volunteer. As the experiment went on, the scientist, who was also an actor, insisted that the volunteer continue delivering shocks even if they showed concern for the actor that was being shocked. The results showed that the majority of the volunteers who participated ended up obeying the “scientist” and delivered shocks to the actor. This was because they saw the “scientist” as a figure of authority, even if it meant harming another individual. (Chambliss and Eglitis,
In this article “The Pearls of Obedience”, Stanley Milgram asserts that obedience to authority is a common response for many people in today’s society, often diminishing an individuals beliefs or ideals. Stanley Milgram designs an experiment to understand how strong a person’s tendency to obey authority is, even though it is amoral or destructive. Stanley Milgram bases his experiment on three people: a learner, teacher, and experimenter. The experimenter is simply an overseer of the experiment, and is concerned with the outcome of punishing the learner. The teacher, who is the subject of the experiment, is made to believe the electrical shocks are real; he is responsible for obeying the experimenter and punishing the learner for incorrect answers by electrocuting him from an electric shock panel that increases from 15 to 450 volts.
In Stanley Milgram’s “The Perils of Obedience,” Milgram explains his own study on the effects authority has on levels of obedience. Milgram designed the experiment in order to recognize the subjects as “teachers,” and actors as “learners,” with another actor posing as an "experimenter.” (Milgram 78). Milgram required the teacher to read a list of word pairs to a learner and to test their remembrance afterward (78). As Milgram explains in his essay, each time the learner answers incorrectly, the teacher is required by the experimenter to flip a switch on an electric shock generator. The author illustrates that the experimenter implies that the teacher is electrically shocking the learner; however, no shocks are actually inflicted. Diana Baumrind
The definition of conformity is the compliance with social standards and laws in a particular culture, environment, society and time. If this occurs the individual changes their attitudes, beliefs or actions to align more holistically with those in the surrounding groups and environment, as a result of real or perceived group pressure. This is ultimately a direct result of the power which a group has over the individual. There are two types of conformity, normative conformity, and informational conformity. The motivation behind normative conformity is the desire to be liked and accepted in society. This is most widely known as peer pressure. For example, a student begins smoking because their peers
...at person’s belief but is carried out to achieve rewards or to avoid punishment (Winner 2011:287). Conformity is behaviour that blends with the behaviour of the majority of the group needed to function effectively in a large group (Winner 2011:290). Conditioning the members of a cult is an effective way to change attitudes of the members to ones that are approved by the cult’s social standards and ideas.
In 1972, Irving Janis presented a set of hypothesis that he extracted from observing small groups performing problem solving tasks; he collectively referred to these hypotheses as groupthink¹. He defined groupthink as “a quick and easy way to refer to a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action²” A successful group brings varied ideas, collective knowledge, and focus on the task at hand. The importance of groups is to accomplish tasks that individuals can not do on their own. The Bay of Pigs, Watergate, and the Challenger disaster are all forms of failure within a group. Specifically, you can see the effect of groupthink of Americans before September 11, 2001. The thought of harm to the United States was unfathomable, but only after the attacks did they realize they were not invincible. When a solid, highly cohesive group is only concerned with maintaining agreement, they fail to see their alternatives and any other available options. When a group experiences groupthink, they may feel uninterested about a task, don't feel like they will be successful, and the group members do not challenge ideas. Stress is also a factor in the failure of groupthink. An effective group needs to have clear goals, trust, accountability, support, and training. Some indicators that groupthink may be happening are; making unethical decisions, they think they are never wrong, close-minded about situations, and ignore important information. Many things can be done to prevent groupthink from happening. One way is to make each person in the group a “critical evaluator”. The leader must ...
In her essay “Group Minds,” Doris Lessing discusses our paradoxical ability to call ourselves individuals and our inability to realize that groups define and influence us. We, as humans, hold individualism in the highest regard yet fail to realize that groups diminish our individuality. Lessing writes, “when we’re in a group, we tend to think as that group does... but we also find our thinking changing because we belong to a group” (p. 334). Groups have the tendency to generate norms, or standards for behavior in certain situations. Not following these norms can make you stand out and, therefore, groups have the ability to influence our thoughts and actions in ways that are consistent with the groups’. Lessing’s essay helps set the context to understand the experiments that social psychologists Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo conducted to explain conformity and obedience.
Elliot Aronson (2012) provides a definition of conformity, two social psychological processes that underlie a conformity and cited examples of reasons why people conform in the book, The Social Animal. Aronson (2012) defines a conformity as “a change in a person’s behavior or opinion as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people” (p.19). In accordance with Aronson’s (2012) definition of conformity, people do conform owing to the social influence, which are two main social psychological processes: belonging and getting information.
Summary of the Experiment In Stanley Milgram’s ‘The Perils of Obedience’, Milgram conducted experiments with the objective of knowing “how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist" (Milgram 317). In the experiments, two participants would go into a warehouse where the experiments were being conducted and inside the warehouse, the subjects would be marked as either a teacher or a learner. A learner would be hooked up to a kind of electric chair and would be expected to do as he is being told by the teacher and do it right because whenever the learner said the wrong word, the intensity of the electric shocks increased. Similar procedure was undertaken on the teacher and the results of the experiments showed conclusively that a large number of people would go against their personal conscience in obedience to authority (Milgram 848).... ...
What is groupthink? There is a simple definition for it, but is it truly that simple? The term groupthink refers to the inclination of group members to have the same opinions and beliefs; it frequently leads to mistakes. It often occurs without an individual being aware of it. Conflict is considered to be a harmful element when related to groups, but conflict is good when considering groupthink because it helps to eliminate the existence of a groupthink. The explanation sounds simple enough, but it is more complex than the description given.
“Conformity is a form of social influence that involves a change in behavior or belief so that one can fit in with a certain group” (McLeod). Such a change is a response to imagined (which involves the pressure of expectations or social norms) or real (which involves the presence of others) group pressure. Another definition of conformity can be “yielding to group pressures”. Group pressure can take many forms, for example persuasion, teasing, bullying, criticism etc. Conformity is also referred to as group pressure or majority influence. The term conformity is mostly used to show an agreement to the position of the majority, and this is brought about by either by the desire to be liked or to fit in, or just to match a social role. The aim of this paper is to argue that conformity is among people because they always live in groups-work groups, family, political, religious and social groups. At the same instance, they are adjusted to obey authority. A conformist mentality makes it easy for people to be influenced by others.
In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a Yale University Psychologist conducted a variety of social psychology experiments on obedience to authority figures. His experiments involved three individuals, one of them was a volunteer who played the role of the teacher, one was an actor who played the role of the student, and one was the experimenter who played the role of the authority. The teacher was instructed by the authority to administrate shocks to the student (who claimed to have a heart condition) whenever they answered a question incorrectly. The voltage of the shock would go up after every wrong answer. The experimenter would then instruct the teacher to administrate higher voltages even though pain was being imposed. The teacher would then have to make a choice between his morals and values or the choice of the authority figure. The point of the experiment was to try to comprehend just how far an individual would continue when being ordered by an individual in a trench coat to electrically shock another human being for getting questions incorrect. The experiment consisted of administrating pain to different people and proved that ordinary people will obey people with authority. Some of the various reasons are that the experimenter was wearing a trench coat, fear of the consequences for not cooperating, the experiments were conducted in Yale University a place of prestige, and the authority f...
Many people believe they are their own person and are free to make their own choices; however, few explore just how much a group can influence their behavior. This realm of influential group power has been analyzed by several psychologist to see how far people will bend to stay within a group mentality. Psychologists Asch, Zimbardo, McEwan, and Lessing defined a group mind as a mass of people who ignore their own morals and conscious to act as one whole entity because of obedience and pressure. As a result, this creates the potential for the group to become a destructively dangerous force.
Conformity is defined as a change in behavior or belief to accord with others. (Meyers 170) What other people do and say can gradually influence others to deviate from ones beliefs and conform to others. One of the most famous documented studies to better illustrate this was a procedure performed by social psychologist, Solomon Asch.
Conformity, compliance and obedience are behavioural consequences of social influence (real or imagined social pressure) that occur in the presence of a group or other individuals (Elsenbroich & Xenitidou, 2012). Often these concepts are misinterpreted as being the same or even synonymous and while they do have similarities they are also very dissimilar. In social psychology conformity, compliance and obedience are distinct concepts that coincide due to their effect on behaviour in the presence of others. Pascual, Line Felonneau, Guéguen & Lafaille (2013) define conformity as an altering of behaviour and beliefs in an individual in order to reflect the behaviour and beliefs of the group that holds influence, though Myers (2014) emphasises that
Groupthink is the psychological phenomenon in which groups working on a task think along the same lines which could have drastic results. It is the result of group polarization where discussions are enhance or exaggerate the initial leanings of the group. Therefore, if a group leans towards risky situation at the beginning of the discussion on average they will move toward an even riskier position. (Marks, 2015). The idea when everyone think the same no one is really thinking. The drastic outcomes result from people trying to avoid conflict with one another, being highly cohesive, and results is questionable decision making (Oliver, 2013). Houghton Mifflin publication of Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions