Asch Opinions And Social Pressure Summary
In “Opinions and Social Pressure” by Solomon E. Asch, he claims that under group pressure, a subject 75% out of 123 participants agreed with the majority of the group. Asch demonstrated an experiment of 8 college student males for a psychological experiment on comparing the length of lines. He orchestrated everyone except 1 person to purposely answer the questions incorrectly, to see if that 1 person would continue independently with the correct answer or agree with the majority of the group. At the conclusion of Asch’s experiment, he was left wondering why do individuals conform to what their peers express instead of standing firm. Asch’s main idea of individuals converting their answers to a groups answers based on either the subjects believed
the group was smarter than they are or the subject could’ve felt that they didn’t want to be treated as a social pariah. Asch’s article is similar to Erich Fromm’s “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem” based on Fromm’s belief that humans started history by being disobedient of what God said. Fromm said “Man has continued to evolve by acts of disobedience. Not only was his spiritual development possible only because there were men who dared to say no to the powers that be in the name of their conscience or their faith, but also his intellectual development was dependent on the capacity for being disobedient…” Fromm and Asch similarities showed that when an individual is independent or disobedient, it can have unsuccessful and successful results in society. The differences in these two articles is Fromm believed that in order to be successful, you have to be disobedient; Asch believed that social pressure change a person’s perceptions of an issue that they know is correct. Asch said “Among the extremely yielding persons we found a group who quickly reached the conclusion: “I am wrong, they are right.” Others yielded in order “not to spoil your results.” Asch also stated “Many of the individuals who went along suspected that the majority were “sheep” following the first responder, or that the majority were victims of an optical illusion; nevertheless, these suspicions failed to free them at the moment of decision.” Asch and Fromm believed have similarities and differences in their articles and in the way their minds were so much alike.
the group was smarter than they are or the subject could’ve felt that they didn’t want to be treated as a social pariah. Asch’s article is similar to Erich Fromm’s “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem” based on Fromm’s belief that humans started history by being disobedient of what God said. Fromm said “Man has continued to evolve by acts of disobedience. Not only was his spiritual development possible only because there were men who dared to say no to the powers that be in the name of their conscience or their faith, but also his intellectual development was dependent on the capacity for being disobedient…” Fromm and Asch similarities showed that when an individual is independent or disobedient, it can have unsuccessful and successful results in society. The differences in these two articles is Fromm believed that in order to be successful, you have to be disobedient; Asch believed that social pressure change a person’s perceptions of an issue that they know is correct. Asch said “Among the extremely yielding persons we found a group who quickly reached the conclusion: “I am wrong, they are right.” Others yielded in order “not to spoil your results.” Asch also stated “Many of the individuals who went along suspected that the majority were “sheep” following the first responder, or that the majority were victims of an optical illusion; nevertheless, these suspicions failed to free them at the moment of decision.” Asch and Fromm believed have similarities and differences in their articles and in the way their minds were so much alike.