Hey everyone, in response to Jessica's posting, I find it hard to believe that so many people did conform to Asch's conformity experiment. I would like to think that I would not conform to an obviously incorrect group of people. But I guess in certain situations I feel more inclined to just agree with the crowd to avoid conflict. Like we learnt in this weeks lecture, when I am with a group of people I believe know more about a particular subject than I do, I am more likely to conform and agree with them, an informational social influence. When I was younger, like in high school, I was more likely to go along with the crowd to be liked, a normative social influence. But I think now, that I am more confident in who I am, and what I know and believe in, I am less likely to conform. Standing up to a crowd can be intimidating though, and maybe this has a lot to do with why so many people in the experiment just agreed with the group. Although this conformity isn't really an issue with experiments like Asch's, in the real world, it can have devastating effects. So I for one will aim to speak up, and say "I do not agree that line A is the same length as line B!".

Clare.