Solomon E. Asch’s Opinions and Social Pressure Essay Example

group, the participants accepted the judgment of the majority on 36. 8% of the trials. There were, however, considerable individual differences, with about 25% of the participants never agreeing with the majority, while some other participants agreed with the majority most of the time. After the study many of the non-conformers said that they had confidence in their own judgment and had a capacity to recover from doubt.

Others saw it as a deficiency in themselves and tried to merge with the majority to cover up. A number of variations of the study were carried out and it was found relationship between group size and conformity. Variables that increased and decreased conformity in Asch’s experiment were group composition, unanimity, prior commitment, self esteem, cultural differences, and task difficulty/complexity. Result of research: social pressure can make a person say something that is obviously incorrect.

Apparently, people conform for two main reasons: because they want to be liked by the group and because they believe the group is better informed than they are. The deeper and more troubling questions about conformity arise in everyday real world (e. g. school-life, work life) contexts. People would rather conform than go against the group. Since people are evolutionarily tuned to be social animals, the perceived benefit of belonging to the group should outweigh the benefit of disagreement.