Thinking back to this class five years from now I think I will remember the video we watched during discussion on conforming. It was super interesting to me because thinking about it i would say that I would not conform, but if I was in the actual situation I am pretty sure I would very quickly. When you are under the pressure of many other people who are all doing the same thing, there is a huge influence to do the same thing. I think that this happens the most when kids in a classroom are asked a multiple choice question by the teacher. If you think the answer the the second choice but the majority of the class raises their hands for the first answer, a lot of kids conform and also raise their hand to the first choice. I think in high school this was the most common because the classrooms were smaller and you knew all the people. I think people are more likely to speak their true thoughts in larger classrooms here at the U then in the smaller high school classes.
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I agree, it's easy to say that you will never conform, when everyone else is looking at you to make your decision, you don't want to seem "stupid" because you think that they all must have chosen the correct answer. While this experiment didn't put a whole lot of pressure on the subject, think of real life situations where people are pressured by friends to do stuff. It's a scary thought on how easy it can be to get someone to do something, regardless if they think it's right or want to.
Conforming has the potential to be both positive and negative. The positive side to conformity is if a large group of suggesting you volunteer for something, it's beneficial to conform. However, in a riot, conforming is a bad thing to do. People will conform during a riot because everyone else is doing it and it will lead to many negative things.
The conforming video was definitely an eye opener. Everyone seems to think that they wouldn't fall prey to conforming with the majority answer, however once they're confronted with the situation, more than 75% of us would have chosen the wrong answer just because the majority said so. This brings a lot of things into perspective, especially how adolescents fall for peer pressure, just because most of their friends are doing something edgy, means that they should do so as well. Scary thought!