Lord of the Flies and The Asch Conformity Experiment
Morals of a person are based upon what they believe is true, but what if those beliefs were tested against the beliefs of others? Most people will go with what the majority of a group thinks than with their own thoughts, beliefs or opinions. Both William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies and the “Asch Conformity Experiment”, shows that when people are pressured by the majority of a group, they will change their own opinions and their own morals to fit with that group.
In William Golding’s novel, a group of young boys get stranded on an island. They soon realize that in order to survive they need to elect a chief. At first they were not sure entirely who to vote for, but then they elect Ralph as the chief (Golding ). Not soon after they vote for their chief the boys begin to divide. Jack and his choir boys want to hunt and have fun as where Ralph wants to keep a signal fire going and build shelters. Soon Jack gets the…show more content… One participant and several of Asch’s assistances were led into a room where they are each given two slips of paper. On Asch’s assistances papers were the same things, one piece had a line and on the other had a series of other lines labeled A,B,C (McLeod). Each were asked to tell Asch which line, A, B, or C, was closer to the first strip of paper with the single line. The true participant sat at the end of the line with different slips of papers. The goal was to see if when in a group would a person stay to what the others said and be wrong or would they say what was true (McLeod). Results showed that the majority of people will go with what everyone else says even though it means being wrong. One third or 32% of participants would rather conform to the others than go with what they knew was right (McLeod). The other percent of participants would confirm at least once or near confirm to the
