Solomon Asch Opinion And Social Pressure Summary

933 Words4 Pages
Sook Zu Lee Ann Westrick GSW 1120 January 21, 2015 Solomon Asch’s experiment In Solomon Asch’s article “Opinion and Social Pressure”, he stated that socialization begins at infancy. Social influences constrain people’s opinions and attitudes, because they want to fit in the majority of the people. The purpose of the study was to investigate the possible effects of group pressure upon individuals, using the visual judgment experiment. This experiment is related to the famous Stanford Prison and Milgram’s experiment, in that perfectly normal human beings can be pressured into abnormal behavior by situation, group, and authority. The audiences of this article are mainly white male, because women and black people were not supposed to be educated…show more content…
The article was created in the 1955, which is 60 years apart from now. While one can assume the result of the experiment is reliable source for the connection between social pressure and individual’s opinion, any reliable source should be up-to-date. It is impossible to take account of the reliability of the study because many things have changed in these past 60 years, such as technology, human rights, feminism, and freedom of speech. In the 1950s, there were only 30 percent of women worked outside of the home, people just discovered the DNA, the Vietnam War began, Alaska became part of the U.S.A and other major events occurred in the United States. The people at that time were not the same people in today’s world. To give an example, most people today can hardly conceive of life without the Internet. People can easily access educational information through the Internet at any level from anywhere. The younger generations are exposed to cultural differences, feminism, global issues, gay right, and more. Because of this, today’s youth are becoming more open-minded than the previous generation. Therefore, this article cannot be a credible source to prove the connection between social pressure and individual’s…show more content…
The researcher mentions that the subjects of the experiment are all young male college students. The selections bias are the main problem in the experiment. Asch states that the subjects of this experiment are total of 123 white young male from three institutions of higher learning. People who are older, women, and not white were excluded from being the subject in the experiment. The young males tend to be much more impressionable than older men. Most young educated males may have zero or less working experiences, whereas, more mature males may have more working experiences in the real world. Most mature males have more or enough social interaction experiences with people than the younger males. They have more life experiences, and more mental strength; they are more likely to be true to their convictions. Furthermore, females were not included in the experiment. This could potentially offend the female audiences who are interested in psychology. This article cannot be viewed as effective because the purpose of this study is to investigate the fragility of an individual in a mass society. A mass society is a combination of different age, race, gender, class, and others. One way to eliminate the selection bias is to use randomized controlled
Show More
Related

  • Obedience In A Few Good Men

    1561 Words  | 7 Pages

    murder that resulted after obeying an immoral “Code Red” order. These two marines sacrificed their self-judgment in order to adhere to the Marine code and obey authority, which ultimately subverted their human individuality in blind obedience. Film summary: Dawson and Downey exhibit extreme obedience as Marines because it has become their identity. They do not identify themselves as logisticians, pilots, or infantry officers. They identify themselves as Marines–with a duty to fight and abide by the

    Read More

More about Solomon Asch Opinion And Social Pressure Summary

Open Document