Psychology has been a very interesting class to me. I think I will remember many things that I have learned over the course of this semester. If I had to pick just one that would be most memorable to me I would have to pick Emotion and Motivation from chapter 11. I find it fascinating to understand why we do the things that we do. I think that the different theories of emotion, such as the James-Lange theory of emotion, the Two Factor theory of emotion, and Cannon-Bard theory of emotion are very interesting. I am also astonished at how powerful and important non-verbals are. It is interesting that most of our everyday communication is non verbal and how much information you can interpret from the cues. The most fascinating concept to me, however, is that of Motivation. I loved learning about what motivates us in our behaviors and pursuits in our everyday lives. I think Attraction and everything that has an effect on it is extremely interesting such as things like what makes us attracted to someone and the factors that can affect that like reciprocity, similarity, proximity etc. Understanding the concepts in emotion and motivation can be extremely helpful and insightful in real life. I am grateful to have been in this class and for the opportunity to learn about psychology.
fros0100: April 2012 Archives
Why are people so likely to conform? What are social influences on conformity? Solomon Asch conducted one of the more well known studies of conformity in the 1950's. This was a "study of perceptual judgements" where participants were asked to compare a standard line with 3 other lines. The fifth person in order was always the one being tested, all the others in the room were in on the gig. Early on in the study, the confederates in on the study would give the right answer so that the participant being tested would feel comfortable and think that the study would be easy. However, the people in on the experiment started to purposely give the wrong answer. So, the person being tested had to decide what to do. Would they say what they knew was right? Or would they conform? Solomon Asch and other researchers studied the social influences on conformity and came to the conclusion that conformity was influenced by a few different factors. One of these is called "Unanimity". The influence of unanimity is defined that "if all confederates (people in on the study) give the wrong answer, the participant is more likely to conform. Nevertheless, if one confederate gave the correct response, the level of conformity plummeted by three-fourths." So the likeliness that someone would conform can be very much dependent on how many people give what answers. The size also plays a factor somewhat. People are more likely to conform if there are more people giving the same answer. However, this only goes up to about 5-6 people giving the same answer. After hitting 5-6 people and going up there's enough that people will conform. Then, there is also "Difference in the wrong answer" which is "knowing that someone else differs from the majority makes the participant less likely to conform." This seems to correlate with Unanimity that if even one person gives the correct answer, conformity severely drops.
I see conformity happening all the time in classes. People will raise their hands because the rest of the class already has. Even thought the individual may not agree with what they are raising there hand for, they still will. This is such a sad thing to see because it takes away from individuality. There is such great worth, creativity, talent, uniqueness, etc. in every person that I hate to see that be thrown away by people conforming.
Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding
Chapter 13, Page 500-502, "Social Influence: Conformity and Obedience"
