The tendency to conformity in our society is so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black. This is a matter of concern.
Psychologists
Solomon Asch
Polish-American Gestalt social psychologist (1907-1996). His 1951 conformity studies showed that over a third of subjects went along with a wrong majority. His 1946 paper named warm/cold as central traits in impression.
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Solomon Asch's Other Quotes
Most social acts have to be understood in their setting, and lose meaning if isolated. No error in thinking about social facts is more serious than the failure to see their place and function.
The presence of a supporting partner depleted the majority of much of its power. Its pressure on the individual was reduced to one fourth.
Independence and conformity were the two main attitudes toward the majority pressure, and most subjects exhibited some of each.
To know a person is to have a grasp of a particular structure.
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A writer must not allow himself to be turned into an institution.
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It is not possible to predict from a knowledge of the strength of a man's drives or from the level of his anxiety what he will do.
-- Donald O. Hebb
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
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The presence of a supporting partner depleted the majority of much of its power. Its pressure on the individual was reduced to one fourth.
-- Solomon Asch
Independence and conformity were the two main attitudes toward the majority pressure, and most subjects exhibited some of each.
-- Solomon Asch