All but one of the participants were really confederates, i.e. colleagues of the experimenter. The ‘participants’ called out, in turn, which of the three lines was the same length as the test line. The real ‘participant’ always called out his answer last but one. The confederates gave unanimous wrong answers on 12 out of the 18 trials (the critical trials).
Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about one third of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed to the clearly incorrect majority on the test. Over the 12 critical trials about 75% of participants conformed at least once and 25% of participant never conformed. In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer. This proved that people wanted to follow others even when the answer was obvious to be part of a social norm.
We found seven sources that in one way or another help us in answering the question - Why should alcohol, rather than any other substance, be the universal symbol of festivity? To get a better idea of alcohol consumption in our closest surrounding - school - we made a survey. It consisted of eleven alcohol related questions. We passed it out among different grade levels, so we could get a bigger variety of answers. We also included some questions which helped us in making a profile of the people we surveyed leaving their identity anonymous.
In “Opinions and Social Pressure,” Psychologist, Solomon E. Asch, along with his colleagues, perform a social experiment to investigate the effect of a group pressure on an individual. During the experiment, a group of college male students are tasked to pick a line of common length among a set of two cards. Initially, all of the subjects choose the same matching line. As the experiment progresses, and the subjects are presented with a third new set of cards, one person is found to disagree from amongst the group. What the dissenter doesn’t know is that the rest of the group is party to a prearrangement in which they must unanimously chose a wrong answer.
It was concluded that people look to those with more knowledge for guidance in the desire to be right, this is informational social influence. Asch (1951) aimed to study the effects of social pressure on people’s willingness to conform. He used a line experiment on American male students as a form of an unambiguous task, all but one of the men were confederates and had decided prior to the experiment wrong answers to the test in an attempt to sway the naive participants answer. After 18 trials of asking them to choose the line the same length of the original line, it was found that 75% of people conformed at least once, and many often did more than that. There was evidence of both normative and informational social influence in this trial as some participants admitted to conforming without truly believing the confederates in order to avoid being made fun of, though some actually began to believe the false answers.
Each of the others is eventually compelled to change his mind at least once (12 juror changes his mind 3 times), usually thanks to an argument posited by 8th. Yet while he is firm in his position, he is not inflexible. Rather, he regularly and openly admits to his own uncertainties, frequently answering others' questions with an honest 'I don't know'; by not hiding his vulnerability he ultimately wins over the entire jury. Similarly, when he first justifies his vote of 'not guilty', he states ' I haven't got anything brilliant. I only know as much as you do' (p.13).
However, unlike normative social influence, informational social influence often leads to a long lasting change in beliefs and attitudes. We often look at others as a guide on how to behave. A study that supports this is Ashs Majority Influence 1953 study into conformity. The aim of the study was to see whether participants would conform to a majority social influence and give an incorrect answer in a situation where the right answers were always obvious. Asch used seven male students and gave them two cards to look at, one with one vertical line on, the other with three vertical lines of different lengths.
The experiment was conducted from August 14-20, 1971. Zimbardo’s goal was to understand the psychological effect to people in abusive prisons. Twelve students were selected out of 75 to play the prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Another twelve of the same 75 were selected to play
In other words, 11% of American citizens do not own a government-issued photo ID. At least twelve states suggested legislation that would demand proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, to register to vote. Proof of citizenship laws passed in Alabama, Kansas, and Tennessee. Recently, only two states had passed proof of citizenship laws, and only one had put such a requirement has more than doubled. At least thirteen states introduced bills to end highly popular Election Day and same-day voter registration, limit voter registration mobilization efforts, and reduce other registration opportunities.
Hannah Aerts PHIL 1102-101 Movie Review #3 Tuesday 24, 2012 Ms. Carr Gattaca Proving people wrong. Countless movies, newspaper articles, books, and revered heroes are all about the same story, coming from the bottom and proving what everyone or the majority of what society thought to be right, wrong. The movie Gattaca not only addresses an underdog rising to the top storyline, but also the moral question of genetically engineering humans. This concept has many pro’s and con’s depending on who you ask. Since we are in a philosophy class, asking three modern and celebrated philosophers what they might think would be the best way to start this sort of debate.