Group Minds Lessing Summary

Most people conform to group pressure and peer pressure. They do not like to voice their opinion against a group of people even if they know they are right. In Doris Lessing’s “Group Minds,” Lessing states “it is the hardest thing in the world to maintain an individual dissident opinion, as a member of a group” (652). The article “Group Minds” discusses how people give in to pressure from their peers and their group members. Lessing states that humans like to be in groups instead of being alone and many people succumb to group ideas. People living in Western countries believe that they are free to make choices and the only thing holding them back is money. Almost everyone lives in groups (families, sports teams, church groups, etc.). For
She makes nice points through the whole reading. Lessing says, “the fact is that we all live our lives in groups…people cannot stand being alone for long” (652). I believe this statement is true because every person I see, they are with friends or their families. Also, Lessing asserts, “it is the hardest thing in the world to maintain an individual dissident opinion, as a member of a group” (652). This is also true in Solomon E. Asch’s experiments in “Opinions and Social Pressure”. Asch writes, “in ordinary circumstances individuals matching the lines will make mistakes less than 1 per cent of the time, under group pressure the minority subjects swung to acceptance of the misleading majority’s wrong judgment in 36.8 per cent of the selections” (656). This shows a lot of people will answer with the group instead of their own opinion. I disagree with Lessing’s idea of, “we (the human race) are now in possession of a great deal of hard information about ourselves, but we do not use it to improve our institutions and therefore our lives” (653). I believe that we are trying to improve ourselves. I hear teachers tell me that I should speak my opinion instead of going with the