Reasons Why People Conform and Obey to the Majority - Coursework Example

Social Psychology Contents Contents 2 Introduction 3 1 Reasons why people conform to the majority 3 Methodology 4 Experiment (Study of Asch) 4 2.1Reasons why people obey authority 5 Methodology 6 Experiment (Study of Meeus and Raaijmakers) 7 3.1 Evaluation on ethical / ethnical issues in methodology 8 Conformity experiment: 8 Obedience experiment: 8 Conclusion 9 References 10 Introduction Ethics consists of acceptable and proper human behaviour for achieving certain goals and objectives. Ethics is also known as code of conduct. Professional organizations follow particular code of conduct for achieving their targets. Ethical policies and practices are determined at professional and personal level. Ethical practices and guidelines are developed after considering the studies of obedience and conformity. Ethics holds a vital position in social psychology. The functions involved in psychology analyze human behaviour. The functions help to know how human behaviour is influenced by several factors. Various researches have been done to know and understand the importance of the factors affecting ethical issues and social behaviour of individuals. These researches include the study of mass communication, attitude, compliance, affiliation, conformity, authority, cross cultural issues, social roles, interpersonal attraction, statues, non verbal communication, group process attribution etc. The conflict between different sets of values leads to the rise of ethical issues. In this essay two experiments will be highlighted which related to social psychology, conformity and obedience. 1.1 Reasons why people conform to the majority The words conformity is also known as yielding to group pressure. Different forms of group pressure influence the activities and behaviours of people. Majority of the people influence the decision and behaviour of individual person. There are some reasons for which people accept majority opinion and follow that. One of the main reasons is the desire of a person to get fit in a group. A person accepts group pressure because he does not want to be an odd man out in the group. In this case people are generally scared of being not accepted by the group members. Privately the person may reject the group opinions and activities but publicly he accepts those things because of fitting into the group. This fear compels them in conforming to majority (Kimmel, 2009, pp. 69-72) The researcher Solomon Asch had made a detailed study on conformity. Many laboratory experiments were conducted by Asch for understanding the degree to which a person’s opinions are influenced by majority people (Hartley, 2006, pp. 56-60). Methodology Research methodology is one of the most important parts of a research. With the help of proper research method the researchers are able to conduct the entire research successfully. There are two types of research methodology. In this research method the researchers used students for analyzing various factors by conducting experiment. The researchers collected original data from the experiment which helped them to understand various ethical issues affecting their behaviours (Flanagan, 2008, pp. 42-45). Majority influence plays a vital role in influencing individual opinion. The experiment of focused on this topic. For conducting this experiment Asch gathered 50 college students. They were all assembled in a room. Many trials were conducted on them for analysing the research topic in details. Vision test was conducted by Asch for getting appropriate response from the participants. Experiment (Study of Asch) The researches Asch conducted the experiment on conformity for claiming majority opinions influence the decision of individual. The aim of this research was to analyse the influence of social pressure or majority group which affects a person’s conformity. Procedure: The researcher used a paradigm for investigating the relationship between task importance, gender, culture, age with conformity. The entire experiment was conducted in a conference room. Total eighteen trials were conducted by the researchers. The critical trials conducted by Asch helped him to measure conformity. Real participants of the experiment played a vital role in making the experiment successful. Lab experiment was the main procedure used by the researcher for analyzing the research topic. Line judgement task was conducted by him for understanding the opinion of participants. He kept native participant and seven confederates within a room. Findings: By conducting the experiment Asch came to know that there exist huge differences between individual reactions in the experimental situation. Through interviewing the participants the researcher came to the participants who do not confirm to majority prefer to remain independent from the group. In at least one question 75% of the participants gave incorrect answer. The experiment highlighted that dissenting voices created differences in the result of the experiments. The incorrect confederate creates differences in the answer which influences other people. The participants of the experiment were very accurate in line judgement. In 98% of the time they selected correct answer. Evaluation: The limitation of this study was all the participants of the experiment belonged from the same age group and same gender. Therefore the results of this experiment cannot be generalised because it lacked population validity. Artificial task was used to measure conformity which shows that the ecological validity of the experiment is low. The results of this experiment cannot be applied to real life situation. 2.1 Reasons why people obey authority Order is given by authority figure. Obedience is related with command given by the authority figure. People have a tendency to obey the orders of a strong person or authority figure. Obedience is a type of social influence where individuals response or act as the order of another person. This is often assumed that without that particular order the individual would not have reacted or acted in that way (Hartley, 2006, pp 58-60). There are several reasons which can explain that why do people obey authority. One of the most important reasons is commitment. People make commitments in following the orders of their seniors or the person holding strong positing. These commitments influence them to obey that person by accepting their authority over them. Even small commitments influence the people in obeying authority figure. Once a person make a commitment to a person holding strong position or power then it becomes difficult for him to go back. If a person is not willing to fulfil the commitment then also he has to follow the order for social pressure or influence. People often obey legitimate authority because the authority figure holds a huge social power. The legitimate figure often gives instruction to the people for maintaining social policies and practices (Flanagan, 2008. pp 80-83). Methodology In 1986 the researchers Meeus and Raaijmakers conducted an experiment for understanding and investigate about obedience in everyday situation. Primary research methodology was used by these researchers. With the help of experiment and observation research methods the researchers conducted their entire research. Through this experiment the researchers tries to understand the extent to which people obey orders. In the experiment there were job applicants, university researchers and participants.39 participants were involved in this experiment. Abusive language was used in this experiment while conducting the interview. By this methodology the researchers were able to understand the level to which people normally obey any authority figure (Miller, 2009, pp. 81-83). Experiment (Study of Meeus and Raaijmakers) The researchers Raaijimakers and Meeus inferred various things by conducting the experiment of obedience. Procedure: Mainly the employees of Dutch were the participants of the experiment. 39 females and males were involved in the experiment. The researchers believed that if the level of stress is increased then the participants will not be able to quality the study. Findings: Very interesting things were inferred from this study. 22 participants of the study tolerated stress. They qualified in the test. Maximum number of participants was considered as real. The Hierarchical model of Maslow was used by the researchers (Hartley, 2006). The researchers contradicted the views of Milgram through their experiment (Miller, 2009, pp. 70-74). They stated that old fashion and unethical and methods were adopted by Milgram in his experiment for which many vital things were ignored by him. The researchers Raaijimakers and Meerus used people of different cultures in their experiment for knowing the reason behind the tendency of the people in obeying authority. Through their experiment the researchers analysed the impact of violence which take place in the everyday life of the people or while facing job interview (Miller, 2009, pp. 70-74). Evaluation: The weakness of applying this experiment conducted by the researchers was conducted in two different cultures. Careful planning of this study helped the researchers to get appropriate results. The inference derived from the experiment was reliable. But the situations created for conducting the experiment was artificial which lacked validity. 3.1 Evaluation on ethical / ethnical issues in methodology Conformity experiment: In terms of ethical issues The major ethical issue of this experiment was student volunteer who participated in the experiment was deceived by Asch by committing to them that they were participating in the vision test. The real purpose of the researchers was to know how the native participant would react on the behaviour of confederates. This deception created ethical problem in the experiment. The participants of the experiments were not told that they were participating in the experiment of social pressure and conformity. The participants were told that they were volunteering an experiment of visual perception (Flanagan, 2008). The procedure of the experiment created pressure on the participants. In terms of ethnical issues Only male young students participated in the Asch experiment of conformity. For this reason the any generalised inference cannot be drawn by conducting this experiment. No female participants were involved in the experiment. This ethnical issue limited the implication of this experiment in practical situation. Obedience experiment: In terms of ethical issues This research gave rise to various ethical issues. Verbal abuses created psychological harm to the participants. The verbal abuse used in that experiment had a long term effect on the participants. They became upset for not getting the job and listening to abusive languages. This affected their confidence level very badly. As a result this factor created an ethical issue (Kimmel, 2009, pp. 56-58). In terms of ethnical issues The participants of Meeus and Raaijmakers experiment were mainly young American people. The researchers did not consider other ethnical races for their experiments. Therefore the reactions and opinions of young people may not match with the old or aged people. For this ethnical issue related to age group of the participants, the results of Meeus and Raaijmakers experiment cannot be generalised. Conclusion Perception, opinion and behaviour of people are often influences by various factors. Social influence and pressure are the two important things which play vital role in influencing people. The researchers Asch explained this concept long back with the help of an experiment. An experiment related to obedience and authority was also highlighted in this research. References Flanagan, C., 2008. AQA Psychology. London: Letts and Lonsdale. Hartley, P., 2006. Group Communication. New York: Routledge. Kimmel, A., 2009. Ethical Issues in Behavioural Research: Basic and Applied Perspectives. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. Miller, A.G., 2009. Reflections on “Replicating Milgram, [pdf]. Available at: < http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-64-1-20.pdf > [Accessed 13 June 2015]. Read More