Opinions and Social Pressure is an essay by social psychologist, Solomon E. Asch. In his writings, he suggests that a person’s thoughts and behavior are directly influenced by society’s opinions and actions which is a foundation to evidence of the psycological theory of “suggestability”. Asch used the scientific method to create and administer experiments to test his theory. His experiments helped show to what degree a person is influenced by sociological surroundings.
Social psychology had not been developed until the early 1900s, so Asch’s theory had never before been explored, but early experimentation with hypnosis greatly impacted Asch’s work. Hypnosis was similar to Asch’s theory because it involved the concept of suggestibility. Asch modeled his own experiments by the hypnosis testing.
Asch’s experiment involved showing subjects two cards: one with a single line, and another card with three lines. College students were asked to pick the line from the second card that matched the line of the first card in length. In each test, all but one of the subjects were instructed to answer incorrectly and unanimously at certain points. The subject who was not instructed to do so was unaware of these specific instructions. This was to test how he would respond to his fellow classmates’ answering differently than what he thought to be the true answer.
The student, faced with the differing opinions of his peers, could either continue to give the correct answer or conform to the opinion of the majority. The experiment had many variations in results. About twenty five percent of the subjects defied the majority opinion, therefore more of the subjects submitted to the majority opinion.
By adjusting the size of the majority, Asch was able to test its significance. When the subjects were given a partner who was in agreement with the subject in test, he did not conform to the majority. When the subject was given a disagreeing partner, he conformed to the opposing opinion more often.
Through his experiments, Asch concluded that, in some cases, individuals are very likely to denounce their own beliefs and conform to the majority. Asch states that, although the information looks bleak, it should not be taken too negatively. The subjects who were involved in the experiments said that they preferred to stay true to their own opinions despite their actions in the experiment. Asch’s findings have greatly influenced the way that sociologists and psychologists alike view the concept of human suggestability.
