Are You Influenced?

     Have you ever been in a situation where your opinion didn’t match the majority opinion? What did you do in that situation? Did you stand your ground? Or did you conform to everyone else’s opinion? Solomon Asch asked the same questions. He conducted an experiment – in what is now known as the “Asch experiment”. He showed his participants this picture…

    He then asked which one of the three lines on the right was the same length as the one on the left. To test conformity, 7 out of the 8 participants were instructed to purposely give an incorrect answer. The real participant was seated at the end, unknowingly forced to give their answer last. Asch wanted to see if the test subject would conform to the majority view or give the right answer. The results were shocking. Asch’s data concluded that about 75% of test subjects conformed at least once out of the 12 trials (McLeod). Even when there was a clear right answer, participants chose to do what everyone else was doing to avoid embarrassment and discord. Why is this?

    The answer is simply because of social influence.

     Our society has grown to the point where it is near impossible to live a life that satisfies everyone’s morals and beliefs at once. This toxic truth reveals that our decision-making choices will always be affected by the way society pushes individuals to conform to its “right” views. The main problem is rooted in social bias, social intolerance, prejudice, and conformity. These forces have subconsciously shaped the way you thought in the past, how you think right now, and how you’ll think in the future and “cause us to behave in ways that are inconsistent with our true desires and interests” (Holmes 39). They drive humans to live a very subjective life. The difference between an objective lens and a subjective one causes a psychological divide in society. We are all affected by social influence every second of our lives. Outside influence is the most powerful factor that affects decision-making in a sensitive, close-minded, fast-moving society.

    People are always yakking about diversity and how inclusion is so important but once someone showcases a slight abnormality, all their previous thoughts are swept away and replaced with the thought that they don’t fit in. Take The Stranger as an example. Why were Meursault’s actions characterized as “different” or “abnormal”? He was a normal member of society but was perceived differently than others. The jury didn’t like that he was emotionless and indifferent and the moment they started characterizing him as an outsider is when everything changed. Meursault’s court case was never about the law, it was about social conformity. The jury stopped listening to the facts and focused on Meursault’s emotions. Before the fact that he didn’t mourn over his mother’s was brought into the case, the jury viewed him through an objective lens. They were presented with true facts about the specifics of what happened at the scene of the crime. Psychologist Jeffery Holmes stated that “once groups have been identified and stereotypes have been created …[it] becomes a trigger for conflict”, which is exactly what happened in Meursault’s trial. Only when the jury found out about Meursault’s unusual personality did they start to view him through a subjective lens and begin to analyze the trial differently. He is later condemned, not for the crime he had committed but because society was displeased with him, his truthfulness, and his lack of conformity. Society valued conformity while Meursault valued his own morals and truth; this difference is the main reason he is a “stranger” to society. Abnormality builds the foundation to subjectivity. Judging normalcy can be derived from an individual’s deviation of ideal behavior. Society claimed that Meursault didn’t fit into their ideal standards so they outcasted him even farther from them because of the influence of society’s so-called conventional and right beliefs.

    In contrast, Where the Crawdads Sing is an example where societal influence was used in favor of the victim. Kya is found not guilty. Most evidence leads the audience to think that Kya murdered Chase but holes in the investigation leave the door open for misunderstandings. The driving force to convince the jury is emotional manipulation. The holes in the evidence become a perfect opportunity to sway the jurors to change their minds. As prejudice is “inextricably linked with our emotions and behaviors towards those groups”, Kya’s lawyer does an excellent job in hitting the right emotional triggers in the jury (Holmes 61). The prejudice that Kya faced, being dubbed the “Marsh Girl” and everyone in town knowing about her family’s early abandonment, helped her guide the jury into taking her side. The jury felt guilty for treating Kya the way they did for her whole lifetime and “…decided that it was time for the community to atone for years of bias against Kya and grant her the freedom to return to the marsh in peace.” (Tulloch). While social influence is an unfavorable weapon, it can also be a strong aide.

    In both cases, the jury exhibited group behavior. To define group behavior in a logistical setting, it’s how people, who are all gathered in the same space, act. Psychologically, the definition is a bit more complicated. It still refers to the gathering of people in the same place, but they will not “become a group in the psychological sense until they share ‘interdependence of fate’”. This means that something must bind the group together so that the behavior of each person somehow become interdependent (Holmes 2). Understanding this in the context of The Stranger and Where the Crawdads Sing, the jurors were not initially bound psychologically in the beginning of the trial; they were only bounded physically – seated in a courtroom together. They only started demonstrating group behavior after the case started and evidence was presented. As the trial went on, each juror’s behaviors factored into the actions of those around them. Maybe even as they reached their verdict, a juror could’ve concealed their thoughts and conformed to the majority opinion to avoid conflict within the group. As group behavior is directly links with outside influence, people’s decision-making process will continuously be altered to conform to society’s expectations.

    Perhaps a more popular case of conformity is shown in the 2004 movie Mean Girls. If you don’t know what I’m talking about or have never watched the movie, it is basically about a high school transfer student that befriends the “wrong group of kids” and ruins her social life because of it. In the movie there’s this thing called a Burn Book. It’s a book written by the so-called “wrong group of kids” – the Plastics – and consists of false rumors that they’ve written themselves to bash other girls for their own pleasure. You would think that it’s just a stupid little book but at North Shore High, that book is everything. (Spoiler alert!!) The day the burn book got leaked was the day that the girls at North Shore High swore to kill whoever wrote it. Hair pulling, finger pointing, bad mouthing, crying, and swearing could be seen happening in every hall. The Burn Book essentially symbolizes the chaos and extremity of social influence in our lives. The rumors in the book weren’t even true but everyone collectively decided to believe what was written by some lame teenagers.

    Imagine for a second that everyone in this world was a robot. We would all have our own databases that couldn’t be affected by anyone else’s databases. This would mean that everyone will have their own original thoughts, opinions, and perspectives. No more bias, no more unnecessary pressures of conformity, no more swayed views, and no more outside influence. But unfortunately, our reality is nowhere near this imagination. This comparison highlights the extent to which society has impacted our every decision.

Although factors like uncertainty and doubt also play into decision-making, social influence has the greatest impact. Our society is increasingly relying on the opinions of others to make decisions. As shown in The Stranger, Where the Crawdads Sing, and Mean Girls, our world has become too complacent on other people’s perspectives, thoughts, and opinions to make our own decisions without being affected by outside influence. Even though it will be extremely difficult, we should strive to lessen the impact of social influence when making choices in life.

Works Cited

Holmes, Jeffrey D. and Singh, Sheila K. Social Psychology. Edited by Bernard C. Beins Ph.D., Facts On File, 1 Sept. 2012. Infobase eBooks, ebooks.infobase.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=191375&ISBN=9781438141480. Accessed 9 Jan. 2023.

McLeod, Saul. "Solomon Asch - Conformity Experiment." Simply Psychology, 28 Dec. 2018, www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.

Tulloch, Bailey. "Reconstructing Rural Discourse." Michigan Law Review, vol. 120, no. 6, Apr. 2022, p. 1337+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A706559368/ITOF?u=lom_troyhs&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=eecb54ac. Accessed 9 Jan. 2023.