Solomon Asch led a number of experiments asking groups of students to participate in a vision test. In reality, all but one of the participants were confederates of the experimenter, and the study was really about how the remaining student would react to the confederates’ behavior. The method consisted of showing the group a picture of a line and asking them to compare the length to everyday objects, which line was longer than the other, which lines were the same length and how long the line was.
The students were asked to answer the questions aloud. The confederates always provided their answers before the study participant, and always gave the same answer as each other. They answered a few questions correctly but eventually began providing incorrect responses.Solomon Asch hypothesized that the majority of people would not conform to something obviously wrong. However, when surrounded by individuals all voicing an incorrect answer, participants provided incorrect responses on thirty-two per cent of the questions. Seventy-five percent of the participants gave an incorrect answer to at least one question.
An opinion leader is an individual whose ideas and behaviour serve as a model to others. This is useful in marketing as companies can use celebrities to boost sales - Cheryl Cole and L’Oreal work together to make women feel like if they use L’Oreal they can have hair like Cheryl. Opinion leaders influence attitudes and can change the behaviour of their followers.
Peer pressure refers to the influence and force exerted by a group in encouraging a person to change their behaviour, values or attitudes in order to conform with the group. This is present in bad habits such as smoking and drinking - people feel if they don’t do what everyone else is doing they will be deemed an outcast. Also effective in marketing with fashion trends and “it” products such as the iPhone or BlackBerry.
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