Social Influence in Communication

Blair Westover, Traci Beeck, Crystal Reece, Chad Wenzel-Spratt, Katie Walsh, Keith Bell

Introduction:

For this experiment we wanted to explore what people trusted more, their own thoughts or other peoples thoughts. We did this by asking one group of people a rather tough question to answer, and then showing them 'results' from the previous group. We did this to test whether or not people would just go with the majority answer if they could not determine a sure answer on their own. This experiment is very similar to the Asch experiment that was conducted 50 years ago. Our hypothesis was that, like the subjects in the Asch experiment, our subjects would just go with the majority more instead of their own opinion. However, our results were quite different, even baffling.

Procedure:

In order to determine whether or not people would go with the answers of the majority which were established by a group, we needed for each group to believe that the other went before them. For this reason, we split the two groups up and gave each group the first questionnaire. Then we switched the groups and had the first group(Group 1)look at the black and white grid. We then made it seem as though the group that was in the classroom first(Group 2) had just answered whether black or white was dominant on the grid. We marked a tally directly below the grid of the 'results' of Group 2. Then we had Group 1 answer the question themselves. The groups switched again and Group 2 was shown the grid with opposite 'results' tallied below it. Then we again asked which color was dominant on an identical grid. This was done so that neither group was wasted because they each had fake results that they assumed were the answers of the previous group.

Materials:

For our experiment, our group used 3 different sets of communication. The first was a questionnaire. The main intention of this questionnaire was to get background information from the subjects, and to find out what they felt guided them in making political decision. The questions on the form went as follows:

1. Circle one

Male Female

2. What Political party do you most closely affiliate with? Choose one and only one.

Republican Democrat Independent

3. What party do you parents most closely affiliate themselves with?

Mother: Republican Democrat Independent

Father: Republican Democrat Independent

4. Rate the following categories in order 1 to 5, 1 being the most influential in making your political decisions, and 5 being the least.

A. Personal Ideology 1.___________________________

B. Parental 2.___________________________

C. Peer 3.___________________________

D. Religion 4.___________________________

E. Political affiliation 5.___________________________

The second form of communication we used varied between groups. Both groups saw an identical grid of 1,000 black and white squares. There were 500 of each shade. The groups were told that there were definitely either more black or more white squares. The variation was that the first group saw a tally which was meant to represent the previous groups results. There were eight white, and three black. The second group saw an opposing tally of 'previous' results: eight black, and three white.

The final form of communication was a question asking the subjects to choose whether the grid contained more black or more white squares. They were asked to chose one and only one of the two choices, black and white.

Experiment Results:

The results of the question on which color was dominant were decisive. Group 1 exactly reversed the results which they were shown. Group 2 also exactly reversed the tally that was below the grid.

The graphs of party affiliation and gender show that there seemed to be little correlation between the results of the grid question and party and gender. The one interesting note was that while everyone listed personal ideology first, females ranked peer opinion as a much higher influence than men. This fact did not, however, have any bearing on whether or not they went with the majority opinion when it came to the grid.

Conclusion:

Our experiment was reminiscent of the Asch Experiment which was performed in 1951. In this experiment, obvious answers were given falsely to see if the test subject would conform with the group. In that experiment, 32% of the subjects gave clearly false answers for the sake of conformity. The experiment we performed came up with decisively different results. We attribute this to three principle reasons:

1) We allowed for an ununanimous majority. In the Asch experiment, it was discovered that if there is just one person that shares the opinion of the test subject, it supplies enough validity to the subject that they go against the majority. Our experiment had an 8-3 split in the perceived results. This may have been enough of a split to allow people to feel secure in giving a dissenting answer.

2) The class has a very good idea of what we are doing in this course. The experiment was one the required the subjects to be unaware of the goal of the results. The situation in class is necessarily biased. A regular test group would not be analyzing our goal or what the 'trick' was, which is more likely to occur in our classroom.

3) One of the arguments against Asch can explain the results of our experiment well. This argument simply states that times are different. The Asch experiment was performed in the 1950s. This decade is not traditionally known for its acceptance of unique opinions (McCarthy, etc.). The fact that we are now administering an experiment that tests social conformity changes because it is 2001. In current society, being perceived as the conformist thing to do can work against you when it comes to public opinion. This need to go against the perceived majority opinion explains the exact reversal of opinion in this experiment. This is best exemplified by the popular and presumably effective advertising campaigns that stress individuality: Apple Computers "Think Different", U.S. Army "An Army of One", Nike's "I Am" campaign, Sprite's "Obey Your Thirst". The advertisers know that despite the effort of our generation to individualize, everyone acts individual in the same way. This can be shown with our results in that in an attempt to assert their ability to go against majority, the subjects became majority.

Sources Cited

Guetzkow, H. Groups, Leadership, and Men. 1951.

Perrin, S. and Spencer, C. "The Asch Effect- A Child of its Time". Bulletin of the BPS. Vol.33, pp.405-406.