Question

Discuss the positive and negative aspects of both Conformity (Asch experiment) and Obedience (Milgram Experiment) and provide at least one example each of when you engaged in them.

1. Positive conformity
2. Negative conformity
3. Positive obedience
4. Negative obedience.

Answer 1

Asch experiment witnessed people confirming with the group on a easy question and ending up giving a wrong answer as the majority gave wrong answers. Conformity is acting or behaving in a way to feel involved in a group, to be like the group members and not to feel left out. The inner belief doesn't change completely but at the end due to conformity one accepts views of majority over their own views. In a positive way, conformity may make a group going quite well where every individual supports the views of the majority, it also helps in deciding something via vote as finally everyone needs to accept the choice of the majority. In a negative aspect though, it takes away the individuality of a person and may make him insecure and inferior. He may always be anxious about some decisions and gets into conflicts between his own views and views of others. Thus, uniqueness doesn't develop. For example, a person who feels that bullying others is bad may end up confirming with his bully gang and bully others. Here, his own views are against his acts and thus, intrapsychic conflicts exist and he is not being able to speak or stand up for himself.

Obedience is another concept of social influence. In obedience, a person does something because an authority has asked him to do so. The perceived credibility of the authority matters. Here, belief may also get changed with time and thus, is a strong social influence. In a positive way, obedience makes children take up good learnings from parents and teachers and implement them in their daily life. In a negative way, obedience may make someone do something wrong and justify it by thinking that it is just because of the orders of the authority. For example, a school authority ordered teachers to slap students when they do mistake in their work. A teacher doesn't like slapping or punishment of this sort but ends up slapping a student. He justifies the act by thinking that it is just because the authority asked him to do and thus, obedience may make us do things which we done actually believe in. Finally, to resolve conflicts, we may start believing in this acts and our individuality may get hampered.