1C Lesson Plan for “Opinions and Social Pressure” by Solomon Asch (206)

 

 

The underlying theme of Chapter 6 is that obedience to authority is in conflict with our individual conscience.

 

 

One. Lexicon

 

1. tribalism; you value your belonging to your tribe to the point that you are willing to compromise your individual conscience, tastes, and proclivities so that you will conform to the tribe’s demands.
2. Suggestibility (from page 207): monotonous reiteration of instructions induce physical changes. In turn, people’s opinions are unconsciously shaped. For example, if they know a song is popular, they will rate it higher. People’s environments affect their political beliefs as well. People have an unconscious longing to belong so their attitudes will conform to what they perceive as the prevailing opinion.
3. The anxiety of dissent. See pages 208 and 209. Experiments show that the dissenter questions his perceptions when the group contradicts him. We can infer that the weaker your identity the more you are inclined to capitulate to the group’s opinion.
4. Groupthink: Sacrificing your individual critical thinking in order to conform to the group. Groupthink tends toward mediocrity, incompetence, and corruption. Take for example an ugly car like the 2009 Acura TL. Individuals on the design committee may have hated the design but were afraid to offend their boss and/or the rest of the committee. Or individuals were afraid to speak out for fear of offending other committee members.
5. Herd behavior: blind conformity to the group even if it means behaving immorally.
6. Abnegating responsibility: You don’t take personal responsibility for your bad actions. Instead, you say you were simply going along with the group.
7. “banality of evil”: the idea that evil is not some strange phenomenon, but rather is part of the everyday fabric of life; it is so common and so ubiquitous and so accepted by the group that we take it for granted and/or become numb to it and/or we don’t notice it at all.  

 

 

Part Two. Examples of Bad Behavior That Results from Social Pressure

 

1. The mailman who finishes his route in two hours and is told by the other mailmen to stretch out his route to eight hours.
2. The worker in a liquor store who’s pressured by his co-workers to steal food and beer.
3. The girl that everyone picked on in high school because it was “cool” to pick on her.
4. Stealing songs and movies on the Internet because everyone is doing it.
5. Cheating on an exam because your classmates are doing it and you know that their cheating will inflate the grade curve.
6. A man grows up respecting women and then he hangs out with men who treat women with contempt and they persuade the once respectful man to follow their ways.
7. A six-year-old boy realizes that the rich boy’s butterfly sculpture is inaccurate and he is scolded by his teacher and students for criticizing the rich boy.
8. When you value group conformity over your individual conscience, you become a tribalist.

 

Three. 10 Signs of Tribalism

 

 

1. learn to create fear and intimidation to create power.
2. Learn to make the rules for popularity
3. Decide who will be the necessary pariahs; scapegoat an innocent victim to make your subjects prove their loyalty.
4. Develop an us vs. them mentality
5. Create a strict social hierarchy that must be followed
6. Master the art of humiliation and mockery.
7. Exercise social Darwinism in which the strong get stronger while the weak are despised.
8. Provincial: tied to your locale; suspicious of outsiders, strangers.
9. Resistant to change and new ideas. In other words, there is a high premium on ignorance.
10. Code of silence whereby you never rat on a high member of the tribe even if his or her behavior is morally bankrupts or has inflicted death or injury on an innocent victim.
11. Tribalism provides the three conditions for torture or inflicting violence against others: authority, routine, dehumanization or demonization

 

Part Four. Writing Options for Essay #3

 

Choose at least 3 sections to analyze the conditions that set the stage for brutality against Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib scandal. A sample thesis might look like this. Chapter 6 provides the essential conditions for the brutality exacted at Abu Ghraib. These conditions include ____________________, _________________, ___________________, and ______________________. 

For research links regarding Abu Ghraib, you might consult the following: Princeton, Times Online, Global Politician, Topic Trauma, 

 

Analyze the conflict between individual conscience and group conformity in the film The Chocolate War. A sample thesis might look like this: The Chocolate War renders us an unflattering portrait of human beings by showing the violent aggression that roils underneath the human tendency for tribalism. This brutality is caused by ___________________, ____________________, _____________________, and _____________________________.

 

H.G. Wells’ famous short story “Country of the Blind” shows that tribalism, conformity to the group, is a deal with the devil. This satanic pact consists of ___________________________, ________________________, ________________________, and _____________________________.