Conforming to social pressuresHow do people conform to social pressures? Will they accept the opinions of others or will they stand firm and trust their own judgments? To determine the effect of social pressure on decision making, an experiment was performed to test the hypothesis; If a person is presented with visual information in a group setting and asked questions about his or her perception of what he or she sees, will he or she respond truthfully if others in the group unanimously choose the wrong answer? A study titled “A Minority of One versus a Unanimous Majority,” Solomon E. Asch designed an experiment to test the power of social forces to understand the extent of influence they have on psychological function. (Asch) The experiment was set up by gathering seven to nine people in a class to answer questions about the length of one line on a paper compared to three other lines. The lines were numbered and participants had to say the line number that they perceived to correspond to the single line on the paper with only one of the lines being the same as the single line. Only one of the individuals in the group was actually tested, the other six to eight individuals were instructed before the experiment to give the wrong answer. The experiment contained eighteen different examples for the group to compare. The only "critical subject", the only person who opposed the masses, has always been in the minority in choosing the correct line. The control group was asked to act passively to the critical subject's responses and not act surprised at whatever choices they made. The entire experiment was conducted at three different universities and consisted of random samples of the student population... center of paper... ed. It is also very difficult for most people to go against the majority because doing so, in most situations, makes a person stand out and be the object of attention when all eyes are on them. While Asch's experiment cannot be considered the most reliable, the idea has opened the door for many to investigate the idea of ​​conformity and how it applies to social pressure. Perception changes in many different situations which may be related to conforming to what the majority says. Children are influenced in their decision making because they are worried about what their friends think or do. Drug use and other risky behaviors can also be attributed to conforming to the way a group thinks or acts. Even witnesses in court or even at crime scenes will sometimes alter their thinking to deal with the pressures placed on them to "see things" a certain way..