Study Of Conformity example essay topic

The Power of Conformity Ryan Her long Conformity refers to an individual's behavior that is performed because of group pressure, even though that pressure might not involve a direct request. Many people want to think that they are conformist enough so that they are not looked upon as strange to others and nonconformist enough to demonstrate that they are capable of thinking by themselves. For many years, psychologists have been interested in human conformity. Usually when people are in groups, they behave according to how those in the group behave. That indicates that conformity can affect a person's behavior and make a person do things that may be against their ethics, attitudes, and morals. The study of conformity was first studied in the 1950's by Solomon Asch.

His experiments were very important to the study of conformity. Asch wanted to find out how conformity could influence behavior. He did not want to focus on the general concepts like ethics, morals, attitudes, and belief systems. Instead, he focused on a more obvious concept which was perceptional conformity. Since he performed the experiment on a simple task, he was able to study conformity in a controlled environment.

Asch wanted to apply group pressure to the experiment so he could manipulate a person's behavior. For the experiment, he made three pairs of cards with three different lengths of vertical lines on one side. On the other side, there was a single line that was the same length as one of the lines on the front side. Asch had seven subjects sitting down in a laboratory.

Then an eighth subject was brought in the room to sit down. What the eighth subject did not know was the other seven subjects were not exactly subjects. They knew what to do and what would happen. An experimenter held up one of the cards and the subjects had to match on of the lines with the single line. For the first two cards, the seven matched the two pairs on lines correctly. The eighth subject answered correctly as well.

On the third pair of cards, the seven subjects answered wrong to see if the eighth subject would conform or answer correctly. Asch found out that 75% of the subjects conformed at least once in the trials, but not one person conformed every time. The other 25% did not conform with any of the groups decisions. Some of the experiments had the subjects write down their answer so the line lengths could be accurately judged. In these experiments, 98% of the real subjects answered correctly. Asch found out many things from the experiment.

Some of the findings are social support, attraction and commitment to the group, size of the group, and sex. Asch did the same experiment with a slight variation. He changed the answers of the seven subjects so that one of them always gave the right answer. This comforted the real subject and only 5% of the subjects agreed with the group answer. This social support experiment showed that if one person gives the same answer then a person feels more comfortable. Also, other experiments showed that the more attracted and committed a person is to a group, the more likely they are to conform.

Asch thought the bigger the group, the more likely a person is to conform. This is not the case. Statistics showed that conformity increased until there was about six or seven people in the experiment. Then the subject felt as if everyone else was working against him / her.

Early studies showed that women conformed more than men in the experiments. But, later studies showed that there is no difference between men and women. Early studies were probably accidentally biased because they were conducted by men and the conditions were more familiar to men than women. The effects of group pressure to conform with a group of people that a person does not even know may be different than real life situations where groups and issues are more uncertain. This has been a question for many years and is still under study. In the United States, conformity has decreased throughout the years, but in collectivist countries such as India or Japan conformity has increased.

The goals of the larger social groups are valued over the values of a single person in these countries. In the United States, the goals of individuals are valued over the goals of the group.