Free Practice Question
RC · Reading Comprehension
555-605
Short Passage - Science
Reading Passage
When the new discipline of social psychology was born at the beginning of this century, its first experiments were essentially adaptations of the suggestion demonstration. The subjects, usually college students, were asked to give their opinions or preferences concerning various matters; some time later they were again asked to state their choices, but now they were also informed of the opinions held by authorities or large groups of their peers on the same matters. (Often the alleged consensus was fictitious.) Most of these studies had substantially the same result: Confronted with opinions contrary to their own, many subjects apparently shifted their judgments in the direction of the view of the majorities or the experts. Other studies reported that people’s evaluations of the merit of a literary passage could be raised or lowered by ascribing the passage to different authors. Apparently the sheer weight of numbers or authority sufficed to change opinions, even when no arguments for the opinions themselves were provided.
Now the very ease of success in these experiments arouses suspicion. Did the subjects actually change their opinions, or were the experimental victories scored only on paper? On grounds of common sense, one must question whether opinions are generally as watery as these studies indicate. There is some reason to wonder whether it was not the investigators who, in their enthusiasm for a theory, were suggestible, and whether the ostensibly gullible subjects were not providing answers which they thought good subjects were expected to give.
The investigations were guided by the underlying assumptions that people submit uncritically and painlessly to external manipulation by suggestion or prestige, and that any given idea or value can be “sold” or “unsold” without reference to its merits. We should be skeptical, however, of the supposition that the power of social pressure necessarily implies uncritical submission to it; independence and the capacity to rise above group passion are also open to human beings. Further, one may question on psychological grounds whether it is possible to change a person’s judgment of a situation or an object without first changing his or her knowledge or assumptions about it.
Now the very ease of success in these experiments arouses suspicion. Did the subjects actually change their opinions, or were the experimental victories scored only on paper? On grounds of common sense, one must question whether opinions are generally as watery as these studies indicate. There is some reason to wonder whether it was not the investigators who, in their enthusiasm for a theory, were suggestible, and whether the ostensibly gullible subjects were not providing answers which they thought good subjects were expected to give.
The investigations were guided by the underlying assumptions that people submit uncritically and painlessly to external manipulation by suggestion or prestige, and that any given idea or value can be “sold” or “unsold” without reference to its merits. We should be skeptical, however, of the supposition that the power of social pressure necessarily implies uncritical submission to it; independence and the capacity to rise above group passion are also open to human beings. Further, one may question on psychological grounds whether it is possible to change a person’s judgment of a situation or an object without first changing his or her knowledge or assumptions about it.
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Difficulty
555-605
Type
RC
Category