<p>I think the general trend here is posting and correcting essays in CC, so can you guys please look over my essay? Any help would be greatly appreciated and considerated.</p>
<p>Excerpt: Is it more important for people to be different or to go along with the group?</p>
<pre><code> Conformity offers the quickest and the easiest answer to a problem, yet doing so does not necessarily lead to correct answers. In fact, submitting to what others say leads to dangerous consequences. The majority is not always correct and sometimes, it is necessary to discern any mistakes that the majority group makes and deviate from the norm.
For instance, a scientific study that I found shows the dangers of conformity; I have redesigned and re-enacted the conformity experiment originally done by Solomon Asch, a renowned psychologist. In my study, I have collected 60 people, whom I instructed that they pretend as if they were participants. I have additionally chosen 40 random participants from students in my school. All participants were asked to answer a series of obvious questions, such as 2+2; the seats were arranged so that the confederates would answer the questions first and influence the participants.
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<p>The results were revealing. About one-quarter of the participants answered every question wrong, while four-fifths of the participants answered at least once wrong. When the experiment ended, I debriefed the purpose and interviewed some of the participants how they felt about rejecting his or her intuition and following the bigger group. One said, “The first 60 participants unanimously agreed on the wrong choice. In spite of their weird answers, I ended up trusting them because included in the actors were some smart students.” As shown, people forgo their individuality and adhere to the ideas spoken by a larger group. The drive to conform is pervasive.</p>
<pre><code> However, the conclusion of this study leads to one important insight: what if the question had a serious consequence if it was answered incorrectly? It seems that conformity leads to a spectacular disaster. For example, I remember a prank that I pulled off with my friends on a pathological cheater who glanced at other people’s paper on every test. In the final exam, hiding a naughty grin on my face, I plotted with my classmates to write down fake answers in same, huge alphabets and write down our own answers in the answer grid. As a result, the kid who cheated, unawares of the fact that we planned against him, scored a 5% on the test and his red face was puffing with anger and sorrow, but the more important consequence was that he added an F on his report card, which caused him to repeat a grade. Since our school was a private one, he had to waste thousands of dollars on his tuition fee, not to mention the immense effort his parents put in his future college plans and most of all, his valuable time. Clearly, the result was devastating and brought much controversy, but which was to be blamed for his sad fate? It was not us “malicious” classmates, nor was it the teacher who made the test. Ultimately, it was his choice to conform with us pranksters.
Does it worth the trouble to conform with what the bigger group does? No. Size does not matter in solving a problem; rather, it is creativity which matters. After all, we are homo sapiens, or “thinking humans.” The true virtue of us humans is to think independently and exploit our creativity.
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