The fact that hypnosis has been a psychological proof that society has an impact on the shape of everybody practices, beliefs, and judgment. It has been an agreeable fact, and Solomon concurs with this in his article “Opinion and Social Pressure.” It is this way that a child can master his or her native dialect down to the finest bit. It is similarly a member of a community would accept any violent behaviors to be altogether fitting and proper because of the social influence. “All sections of social science have removed their part from the observation of the profound influence that some of the social groups have on their members” ( Asch, 1955 ). For most of the psychologist, they explain that group pressure within the mind of people brings some questions which have to be investigated. In this respect, the investigation on the article was done basing on the hypothesis that individual submit uncritically as well as painlessly to some external manipulation because of suggestion or rather prestige such that any particular concept, value or idea can be adopted or unsold without referring to the merits. “Individuals have to be a skeptic of the belief that the power of social pressure automatically implies that indiscriminating submission is to it” ( Asch, 1955 ). Even though this is not always the case because people can be independent of the entire capacity to go above and beyond the group passim. It is not clear on psychological grounds whether there is a possibility to manipulate someones judgment of a given situation without altering their knowledge as well as assumptions. The experiment investigated the influence of social pressure on individuals. The experiment was done with a number of the author's associates whereby they investigated the influence of group pressure upon people as well as various problems along with some of the refined questions which it raised.
Methods
The experiment involved seven to nine young college students for the psychological experiment on the visual judgment. In the experiment the subject is informed that they will be required to compare the lengths of lines. Two large cards one with one verticle black line which is used as the standards whose length is to be matched. The other card had three line with different lengths in which the subject was expected to choose that line that had the same length as the one on the other card. Only one of the line is of the same length, but the other two vary by three-quarters of an inch or almost an inch and three quarters. All except one of the subject had been informed of the experiment earlier and were just acting ( Asch, 1955 ). The main participant was placed in a position that allowed him to answer the last. The control subject were trained on how to answer with the presentations of the card. In the first two tries, the subjects gave the correct answer, on the third trial all the test subjects gave incorrect answers. The remaining trials the control subjects gave consistently wrong answers.
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Results
It was found out that the majority of the subject response remained correct with 63.2 percent accuracy with a given minority of response conformed to the controlled subject and gave the incorrect answer by 36.8 percent. In general, 75 percent of the subjects had at least incorrect answer out of the total 12 crucial trials ( Asch, 1955 ).
Criticisms
The study is unambiguous hence the true test of conformity. It is true that the Asch paradigm has been used many times and is used as a method of doing conformity research. However, the subjects were not a true representative of the target population. Only the males were used hence making It endocentric. Some of the evidence proves that females are more conformist as compared to males hence the findings would not be applied to women in general. Also, all the subjects used were undergraduates who are brilliant than the average population which may have a huge effect on the result. In conclusion, the setting of the experiment did not have ecological validity. Therefore, the task was very artificial and can not be used to represent conformity in the outside world.
Conclusions
The study informed us that it is true that the social influence of the community easily sways individuals. It was a proof that human beings tend to have social recognition therefore easily adapting to what those around them are doing even if it does not make any sense at all. I do believe that it is clear that human beings naturally conform to the society or rather their social groups even though they have a chance of making their own pristine decisions.
Reference
Asch, S. E. (1955). Opinions and social pressure. Scientific American , 193 (5), 31-35.
