HOW SOCIAL GROUPS OVERRIDE PERSONAL CONVICTIONS
A
A social group may be defined as two or more people who interact, demonstrate a sense of unity, and pursue common goals. The members of a group conform to the group’s dynamic in terms of the roles played, the manner in which members communicate, the informal rules that govern how members behave, and divergences in status, which are usually determined by occupation, expertise, age, gender, ethnic origin and financial status. Members of a group often speak and act in a way that would allow them to maintain membership in the group.
B
In sociology, the similarity with which members of a group behave is known as group behaviour. Groups afford many opportunities to make goals, and each member plays a role to achieve these goals. At times, however, an agreed upon activity might conflict with what a member would pursue if he were on his own, and the behaviour needed to accomplish the activity may even clash with a member’s personal moral and ethical code. Some go against that code because they perceive membership as too valuable to compromise. For instance, a group of school boys decide to pick on a boy who is not a member of their social clique. The conscience of some members may become disturbed, but they participate anyway because of their loyalty to the group.
C
If people in a group risk having to do something that goes against their convictions, why would anyone want to be part of such a group? Essentially, groups satisfy various needs, some of which are natural and basic to human nature, such as companionship and the need for security and protection, while other needs are related to desires and predilections—affiliation, status, power, control, and achievement. Another reason is that when members of a group agree, they all feel like they fit in, and this activates the pleasure centers of the brain.
D
A test conducted by Solomon Asch, an American Gestalt psychologist, examined the willingness of a group member to conform to the viewpoint of fellow members even if the members’ viewpoint was wrong. In each experiment, only one out of several subjects was real; the others had been coached to respond to questions in a certain way. Some of the fake subjects routinely chose the wrong answer, and for certain questions, they unanimously chose the wrong answer. The results showed that one-third of the real subjects went with the group even though their answers went against their convictions. Later, when asked why they did so, some said they feared being ridiculed while others said that fellow subjects probably knew the answers better than they did. In other words, group pressure can lead individual members to modify and distort a situation, or even deny reality.
E
Another experiment conducted by a high school teacher in Palo Alto, California underscores the dangers of group behaviour. In a sophomore history class, the teacher, Ron Jones, said discipline and self-control were important. In order to emphasize that, he had the students stand up and sit down until they were able to do the task in complete unison. The next day, he had the class say again and again, “Strength through discipline, strength through community.” He also taught them a salute, calling it a Third Wave salute. Other students who heard about the class requested to join. On the third day, Jones gave each participating student a membership card and kept talking to them about action and discipline. He told them to report students who were breaking rules, which they did.
F
On the fourth day of the experiment, Jones told them that Third Wave was an actual political movement in the United States and that it was designed to teach people discipline, order and pride. He told the students that he would reveal the leader of the movement the next day. By that time, so many had joined Jones’s group that they had to meet in the school auditorium. They greeted Jones with the Third Wave salute and kept chanting “Strength through discipline, strength through community.” Jones then told them he was going to reveal the group’s leader. He turned on a movie projector which showed a film about a Nazi rally and the Nazi death camps. The students were stunned, and some were in tears. Jones then said that out of regard for the group’s objectives, they had failed to examine their own convictions and the principles on which the group was founded. Indeed, a new Third Reich had nearly been born.
G