Massie's blog debut

Opinions and Social Pressure
1. Suggestibility is basically a less extreme version of hypnosis that involves repeating instructions constantly until the instructee feels they must do it. Suggestibility kind of is social pressure because the repetition of instructions makes the person feel pressured into making a decision without thinking for themselves.

2. There is about eight men in a room and they are asked to compare the lines on two large white cards. All but one of these men are asked to miss some questions on purpose. They start out with all of the men agreeing with each other. However, as the experiment continues, all but the one person start missing questions intentionally. The experiment is to see whether or not the subject falls into peer pressure or goes with what he feels is right. The results tend to fall more towards peer pressure than instinct.

3. The more people in opposition, to a certain point, the less the person fell into peer pressure. The change from a unanimous opposition to a few who answered correctly with the subject had a tremendous effect. The subject would generally go against the majority if he had some assistance.

4. Consensus involves everyone thinking for themselves in order to obtain the answer. Conformity is falling under the pressure of the masses no matter how crazy it sounds.

1. I completely agree with Asch when he stated that it is very easy to shape one's opinions or attitudes by social pressure. I see cases all the time where someone knows what they feel is right deep inside, yet they conform to whatever the majority tells them to. One good example that I have seen is that people that were raised by their parents to be Christians, later become Agnostic because their friends or lover are. In this situation, both phases were an example of a person conforming. This person should go by what he/she feels is right and not let whoever he/she is around effect their decisions. It really is a sad thing that people are so easily swayed. Not only does it make for a weaker society, but it makes for a less-educated one as well.

2. The results to this experiment do not surprise me at all. I have seen the way that humans react in society. I have been around enough to know that most of us have no backbone when it comes to right or wrong. The only thing that surprised me is that there is no change in social pressure after being over powered by about three. I have found in my experience that it is a whole lot tougher to put my opinion against thirty people rather than four. I guess that is why they had to test this theory several times before this fact was discovered. Everything else in this study though was just a painful state of the obvious. I knew that social pressure was one of the most powerful things on the human mind.