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Opinions & Social Pressures

             Solomon Asch, a social psychologist at Rutgers University, located in New Brunswick, New Jersey, performed many experiments in the early 1950's on the influences of a group on an individual. Upon performing these experiments Asch discovered that individuals can be influenced by a group to ignore their own beliefs in order to conform to what the group is agreeing upon. The experiments Asch conducted show a tendency for people to ignore their own senses rather then risk appearing different from the majority.
             Asch states in "Opinions & Social Pressure," that social influences have a way of shaping your everyday life. The example he gives to back this up is a young child learning to speak. Young children learn to talk from listening and observing their parents and immediate family. The concept of a group having an affect over an individual's opinions and what not has raised many questions that psychologists are interested in answering. .
             One particular question that scientists are very interested in answering is to what extent does a group of people have over one's thinking? Scientists began studying this, and other questions with the rise of hypnosis. Toward the end of the 19th century it was believed that only hysterical patients could be hypnotized. Soon afterward scientists realized that hypnosis was only an extreme form of a very normal psychological process, which was later called "suggestibility.".
             With this new idea of "suggestibility" many psychologists began testing this theory. Some of the first experiments involved college students who were asked to state their opinions about certain subject matters. Next they were later on asked again about their opinions, this time after being informed of what the majority believed or what authority's opinions were. Very often the opinion they were informed of was simply made up. However in the end, the results from the experiments showed that when the students were presented with someone else opinion they often changed their opinion to that of the one they heard.


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