Asch Conformity Experiments

I had to write this for speech class. I thought it was an interesting topic, and I liked how I had written it, so I'm posting it.

"Have you ever found yourself laughing at something that wasn't funny just because others were laughing? Or, have you ever agreed with something just because everyone else was? And were you ever pressured into doing something because others were doing it? This is called conformity. Conformity is defined as changing your attitude, opinion, or behavior so that it matches that of others. Often times we find ourselves conforming without realizing it. Sometimes this is helpful, other times it is not. Solomon Asch, a pioneer in social psychology, performed one of the most famous conformity experiments at Columbia University. This experiment forever changed the way we look at social compliance.
As a subject in this experiment, you would be asked to participate in what you believe to be a vision test. You join a group of fellow subjects while the experimenter holds up two cards. Your mission is to compare the line on the first card to the three lines on the second card to find the one that matches. Simple enough, but what if your peer subjects unanimously chose the wrong answer? This is the challenge that Asch's subjects were faced with.
More than one-third of the time, his subjects were willing to answer incorrectly in order to conform to the majority, while, when subjects were given the same task alone, their ability to answer correctly prevailed more than 99% or the time. Solomon Asch also revealed that there are certain aspects that strengthen conformity, such as having a unanimous group of three or more people or making the subjects out to feel insecure or incompetent.
Bottom line? We are sensitive to social norms and our minds are trained to obey and to conform. Although this type of suggestibility may seem petty, we are not immuned. Behavior is contagious. Just as Solomon Asch himself had said, "...the tendency to conformity in our society is so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black..." "