Asch Social Conformity Essay

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Asch questioned how does someone else’s opinions influence or own and how strong is the urge toward social conformity. In Asch’s study, he highlighted how subjects can be naïve when confronted with a majority group opinion that is different from their own. He showed how people tend to conform to the group even if it goes against the individual’s own initial perception. Asch’s paradigm consisted of using groups of seven to nine male college students for “a psychological experiment” in visual judgment. The experimenter told the subjects that would be comparing the length of lines. They were given two cards. The first card had one line on it, which was the line they would be comparing. The second card contained 3 lines. One was the same length …show more content…
The individual differences show that 25% of the subjects never agreed with erroneous judgements of the majority group. Asch reported some of the general reason for individual differences in the independent group and the yielding group. The independent participants had a firm confidence in their own judgement, they were able to overcome doubt, and make their own judgement based on their perception regardless if they believed the majority group was right or wrong. The subjects that were susceptible and conformed to the majority did so because they believed the majority group was right and they were wrong. Some even believe that the other participants (confederates) were experiencing optical illusions, but this still did not allow them to choose independently. Asch also found that number of people in oppositions increased the pressure for participants to conform also increased. A subject who was confronted with a single individual who opposed their answer remained independent; however, when the opposition increased by 2 the minority subject’s acceptance of the erroneous judgement of the majority group increased by 13.6%. When the opposition increased by 3 the acceptance of the erroneous judgements of the majority group increased to
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