Opinions and Social Pressure free essay sample

Although conformity is inevitable, is there a possibility of indifference because of personality, education and social pressures? â€Å"Social influences shape every person’s practices, judgments and beliefs are a truism to which anyone will readily assent. † (Asch, 20) Solomon Asch’s experiments in the 1950’s set a line up for how people in the real life make decisions based on facts. In the journal article, Solomon Asch presented many facts, which create truth to his thesis â€Å"How, and to what extent, do social forces constrain people’s opinions and attitudes? † Experiments were conducted to prove Asch’s theory of the way each person makes a decision and why. The experiments are as follows â€Å"A group of seven to nine young men, all college students, are assembled in a classroom for a psychological experiment in visual judgment. The experimenter informs them that they will be comparing the lengths of lines. † (Asch, 19) The experiments conclude that the test subjects are usually convinced due to the unanimous group of decision makers. We will write a custom essay sample on Opinions and Social Pressure or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page As the experiments begin everyone agrees unanimously. In the middle of the experiments, the answers from the test subjects start to change. This begins with the experiments and the test subjects all agreeing and as the experiment goes into the second phase of asking the question they are being asked to answer the test subjects have a second look and at least one test subject disagrees. Towards the end of the experiments, while reading Solomon Asch’s â€Å"Opinions and Social Pressures†, â€Å"†¦this study provides clear answers to a few relatively simple questions†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Asch, 25) Each person has degrees to which they will conform. In conclusion, Solomon Asch’s found there were vast differences between each person’s reactions to the experiments. â€Å"Of course individuals differed in response. At one extreme, about one quarter of the subjects were completely independent and never agreed with the erroneous judgments of the majority. At the other extreme, some individuals went with the majority nearly all the time. The performances of individuals in this experiment tend to be highly consistent. † (Asch, 20-21) Solomon Asch also found â€Å"†¦those who participated in this challenging experiment agreed nearly without exception that independence was preferable to conformity.