"Sociology Class" What is the main topic of the lecture?

Narrator: listen to part of a lecture in a sociology class.
Professor:
Social influence involves the changes in behavior influenced by the actions of other people. Social  Q6
influence can come about for a variety of reasons, on a continuum from mere suggestion to, in the more
severe form, well, to torture. How does social influence work? Well, first we must become aware of a
difference between ourselves and the values or behaviors of other people. There are a great many studies
of social influence that demonstrate how the presence of others can cause us to change our attitudes or
actions. Studies show that people eat more when dining with others than, and I’m talking about dining out
here, so they eat more in the company of others than they do when they’re alone. They also run faster
when others are running with them. There’s even some interesting research on social influence among
animals with similar results to... to those of human studies.
    Probably one of the most interesting aspects of social influence is the pressure for conformity.
Conformity is a process by which an individual’s opinion or behavior moves toward the norms of the group.
In a classic study by Solomon Asch, seven people were shown cards with three lines drawn on them.
Here’s an example:
    So, they were shown the lines, and then they were asked to select the line among the three that
matched the, uh... the... standard line. Here’s the standard. So there’s no question as to the   
comparison. This has to be easy, right? Wrong. You see, Asch enlisted the cooperation of six of the seven  Q10
participants in the experiment. On the first card, the six respond correctly—they... they identify the
lines of the same length—so the seventh person, who is the only real subject in the experiment, well, the
seventh person answers correctly, in agreement with the others. But on the next card, four of the
cooperating participants choose an incorrect answer, but they’re in agreement, so the problem for the subject
is whether to conform to the opinion of the peer group, even though the answer, uh, is in conflict with the
answer that the subject knows to be correct.
    So what do you think happened? Well, subjects who were tested alone made errors in answers fewer
than 1 percent of the time. This was the control group. But of those tested in groups of seven, let’s see, uh,
75 percent yielded at least once to conform to a group answer that was clearly incorrect, and on average,  Q7
subjects conformed to the group in about 37 percent of the critical trials. This means that they were
bringing their behavior into agreement with group norms in... in spite of what they were seeing.
    Later Asch manipulated the size of the control group... I’m sorry, the experimental group... to see  Q8
whether group size would affect pressure, and it did, but probably less than you might expect.
Um... groups of four demonstrated about the same results as groups of eight. Interestingly enough, a
unanimous agreement by the group was more important than the number. In other words, a unanimous
opinion by three exerted more pressure to conform than a majority of seven with a dissenting opinion in
a group of eight.
    Similar experiments have been performed in various countries, among diverse cultural groups, with,
urn, comparable results. Of course, people in cultures that emphasize group cooperation tended to be
more willing to conform, but remember that many of the original studies were done in the United States
where there’s a high value placed on individualism. In an interesting variation on the study, Abrams found  Q7
that conformity is especially strong when the group is selected from among those people that the subject
clearly identifies with, either because, um... they have characteristics in common or...or they know
each other and interact in a peer group outside of the experimental situation.
    So what does all of this mean in the real world? Well, since group members can influence one
another to conform to the opinion of the group, the group.., decisions of a group, uh, may be called into
question. What about decisions by political committees or parliaments? What about juries who are
charged with convicting or acquitting an accused defendant? Clearly, social influence will play a part in
these critical group decisions.
    Also interesting is the fact that after a decision is made by a group, there’s a tendency to solidify,  Q9
and by that I mean that the group becomes even more convinced of the validity of the group opinion.  Q11
Um... this may happen because individual group members who strongly support the group tend to be
more popular with the group members.