Social Influence Assignment (Psychology) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Social Influence Assignment (Psychology) - Essay Example nd their respective relationship with the assumption of conforming to society: conformity is directly proportional to the number of confederates or accomplices in the group and it is directly proportional as well to the unanimity of the control group. In truth however Asch hypothesized that the majority would not conform to anything that was obviously wrong and held that â€Å"individuals are not as malleable or submissive as prevailing doctrines maintained† (Friend et.al., 1990, p.31). According to Blass (1998, p. 46), the original focus of Asch’s studies was to study conformity to behavior of greater consequence than judging lengths of line, yet this technique was employed nevertheless because of its correspondence as empirical and statistical data and the convenience in presenting its findings. Thus the experiment was conducted by seating participants, including confederates, in a room and they were asked a variety of questions on lines such as which line matches with another and other comparative questions depicted on a pair of cards. They were all asked to announce their answers out loud and the confederates always recited their answers before the participant who was being studied. At first, the confederates delivered accurate answers but they eventually opted to have wrong answers as per instruction. During the course of the experiment, the two variables as stated earlier, namely the number of confederates and the unanimity of the answers of the group, were gradually changed. Keeping in mind the two choices of the studied participant which was to either act out of his or her own independence, that is to ignore the majority, or to conform, which is to ignore his own senses, the results were as follows: Of the 123 put to the test, in ordinary circumstances individuals matching the lines will make mistakes less than 1 per cent of the time, under group pressure, studied subjects swung to acceptance of the majoritys wrong judgments in 36.8 per cent of the