by DK
At the level of personal change, people cannot be given a new belief system, but must find and accept one for themselves. When an old belief has been proven wrong or ineffective, we are naturally inclined to replace the old value system with a new one, filling the uncomfortable void left by the unfreezing process. We do this in a combination of ways: relying on our instinctive feelings, studying role models, and looking more generally to the vast array of information available. We hope in this way to expose ourselves to a new piece of information that will solve the problem. Once this insight is achieved, we have accepted and established a new mindset.
In the case of the American housewives during World War II, Lewin provided the women with new information by educating them about the good taste and nutritional value of offal (thereby replacing their old belief that it was an inferior meat), and convincing them that given the reality of wartime food shortages, there was absolutely no shame in serving it to their families (thereby replacing their pre-wartime belief that they would be viewed as social inferiors for eating it).
Learning to use new technologies in place of old ones is made easier by an increase in driving forces—such as the ability to contact friends and family worldwide, instantly and inexpensively.
The freezing stage
After change has been implemented within an organization, it must become part of the company’s culture (or “frozen”) in order for it to be successful in the long term. The new thought processes, practices, and behaviors adopted during the transition must become routine. Management can help to ensure changes become more firmly established by publicizing the ways in which change has benefited the company, and by nurturing positive feelings toward the change among employees, perhaps by delivering rewards for implementing the new skills or processes. For example, in the 1990s, Continental Airlines was forced to file for bankruptcy. In order to stay in business, the management implemented a major change: they shifted the company focus from saving costs to putting out a quality product that met high customer standards. They decided to reward employees for adopting the new policies and practices (to ensure compliance to the new priorities) by offering them a $65 bonus if the US Department of Transportation rated the company among the top five airlines. The use of Lewin’s change model marked Continental’s evolution from being the poorest-performing airline to being named Airline of the Year.
At the individual level, the freezing stage marks a time when new beliefs and practices are tested through trial and error; this either reinforces the changes or starts a new change cycle. For example, after a week of serving offal to her family, a wartime housewife might assess whether her family seems to enjoy the meat, whether they seem healthy, and whether other families seem to be judging her positively or negatively based on her meal choices. If the answers to these questions are positive, she will continue to serve offal at dinnertime. If, however, her children do not appear to be as healthy as they were when eating chicken or steak, or if other women are criticizing her choice of meat, she may decide to abandon offal and look for other ways to feed her family, starting the unfreezing and change processes all over again.
Lewin’s pioneering experimental work into social systems has led him to be widely recognized as the founder of social psychology. He was the first psychologist to study “group dynamics” and organizational development in a methodical way. He applied rigorous social science to effect useful social transformation, and his work has been influential across the fields of experimental and social psychology.
"There is nothing so practical as a good theory."
Kurt Lewin
KURT LEWIN
German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin was born in 1890 into a middle-class Jewish family in Mogilno, Poland (then Prussia). In 1905, his family moved to Berlin, where he studied medicine at the University of Freiburg before transferring to the University of Munich to study biology. During World War I, he served in the German army, but returned to Berlin to complete his PhD after being injured. He worked at the Psychological Institute, Berlin, from 1921 to 1933, when restrictions on the Jewish population compelled him to resign and seek refuge in the US. He began working at Cornell University, then moved to the University of Iowa where he became a professor. In 1944, he became director of the Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but died of a heart attack just three years later.
Key works
1935 A Dynamic Theory of Personality
1948 Resolving Social Conflicts
1951 Field Theory in Social Science
See also: Sigmund Freud • Wolfgang Köhler • Leon Festinger • Max Wertheimer • Elton Mayo
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Conformism
BEFORE
1880s Hippolyte Bernheim, a French physician, uses hypnosis to demonstrate the concept of “suggestibility.”
1935 Muzafer Sherif’s conformism experiment leads Asch to develop the Asch Paradigm.
AFTER
1963 Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments show that people conform for an authority figure despite experiencing a moral conflict.
1976 Serge Moscovici argues that a consistent minority can be influential.
1979 Knud S. Larsen, a Danish psychologist, shows that conformity may be tied to cultural climate.
Social psychologist Solomon Asch challenged our idea of ourselves as autonomous beings when he devised an experiment to demonstrate our urge to conform. His famous experiment showed that when people are confronted with a majority opinion, the tendency to conform may be stronger than their commitment to what they perceive to be true. He detailed his findings in his 1955 paper Opinions and Social Pressure, which also discusses the social influences that shape a person’s beliefs, judgments, and practices. Asch wanted to investigate the effects of group pressure on individual decision-making, and how and to what extent people’s attitudes were influenced by social forces around them.
Turkish psychologist Muzafer Sherif set out to answer similar questions in 1935, using a visual illusion called the autokinetic effect, whereby a stationary spot of light seen in a dark room appears to move. He told the subjects of his study that he was going to move the light and asked them how far they thought it had shifted. Tested in groups, the participants’ estimates converged into a group norm, revealing that they used others’ estimates as a frame of reference in an ambiguous situation. Although Sherif believed that he had demonstrated the principles of conformity, Asch contended that—because there was no right or wrong answer to the task—no definitive conclusions could be drawn. Conformity, he believed, could only be measured in terms of an individual’s tendency to agree with group members who unanimously give the wrong answer on a task that has an unambiguous solution. The simple perceptual task that became known as the Asch Paradigm was designed to offer this.
"All the yielding subjects underestimated the frequency with which they conformed."
Solomon Asch
The Asch Paradigm
The experiment was conducted with 123 male subjects, each of whom was put individually into a group of five to seven “confederates” (people who were aware of the real aims of the experiment but were introduced as fellow participants). The group was shown one card with a line on it, followed by another card with three lines labeled A, B, and C, and asked which one of those three lines was the same length as the line on the first card.
The room was always organized so that the subject would give either the last or the penultimate answer. Over the course of 18 trials, confederates were instructed to provide the correct answers for the fir
st six, but then to give identical but incorrect answers for another 12. This was to test whether or not the subject would answer correctly or whether he would match his response to that of the confederates when all gave the same—incorrect—answer. Initially, Asch thought that only a few of the subjects would comply with the confederates’ answers. After all, the task was simple and the answers obvious; during the pilot study in which there was no pressure to yield to an erroneous group, only three errors were made out of 720 total trials. The results of the actual study were surprising. When surrounded by a group of people all giving the same incorrect answer, subjects gave incorrect answers on almost a third (32 percent) of the questions; 75 percent of them provided an incorrect response for at least one question. One person complied with the group giving a wrong answer on 11 out of 12 trials. Because the task was both simple and unambiguous, these figures indicate a high degree of conformity by the subjects. However, not a single participant conformed on all critical trials, and 13 of the 50 participants (26 percent) never conformed.
The results proved that the subjects themselves were highly consistent. Those who broke away from the group opinion and provided an independent answer did not succumb to the majority even over many trials, while those who chose to comply with the majority seemed unable to break this pattern.
In the Asch Paradigm experiment, participants were given a visual test. They had to decide which of the three lines on the second card was the same length as the one on the first card. Each question was called a “trial” and there were 18 trials in all.
Explanations
To get a deeper understanding of his results, Asch interviewed his subjects to find out why they offered incorrect answers. Some said they wanted to go along with what they believed to be the experimenter’s wishes and avoid upsetting the overall experiment. A few actually wondered if they were perhaps suffering from eye strain or were seated at a misleading angle. Some denied that they were aware of having given incorrect answers. Eventually, some admitted to knowing their answers were incorrect, adding that they did not want to stand out or appear different and foolish: they wanted to fit in. Asch also spoke to the subjects who had maintained correct and independent responses, and found that they had not been unresponsive to the majority, but had been able to recover from the doubt that they felt in order to give an honest account of what they saw.
Asch performed variations on the experiment to test what difference the size of the majority group made to levels of conformity. He found that just one confederate had virtually no influence on the subject’s conformity, two had only a small influence, but three or more encouraged a relatively stable tendency to conform. Unanimity in the confederates’ responses was a more powerful factor; but even if only one confederate offered an alternative answer, the subjects were much more likely to provide an independent (and correct) response. This finding highlights the power of even a very small dissenting minority. Furthermore, Asch discovered that if he allowed the participants to give their answers privately, by writing them down on a piece of paper, conformity noticeably decreased, and this held true even if the confederates were still giving their answers aloud.
Cultural norms
Some psychologists hypothesized that Asch’s findings reflected the cultural climate of 1950s America during McCarthyism, when dissent was seen as anti-American and people were imprisoned for their opinions. Later studies found variations in levels of conformity. For instance, a study conducted in the early 1970s (a time of liberal, progressive thinking in the US) found far lower rates of conformity. However, a study in the late 1970s showed a return to higher rates.
Conformity rates for cultures worldwide also differ. Researchers found that individualist cultures such as the US, the UK, and other Western European countries, where personal choice and individual achievements are valued highly, show lower levels of conformity than collectivist cultures such as Japan, Fiji, and African countries, where group belonging is valued highly.
Psychologists have criticized Asch’s methods on the grounds that he focused on a stripped-down version of group behavior that does not feature much interaction between participants, or that he was more focused on the individuals within a group than on the group dynamic. Others wonder if he overstated the power of the majority to influence the minority. Serge Moscovici, in particular, disagreed with Asch’s analysis and argued that an active minority could influence the majority and bring about change. Moscovici was inspired to develop his own studies to demonstrate how a consistent minority can affect the thinking of the majority.
Although Asch acknowledges that social life requires some consensus, he also emphasizes that this is most productive when each individual contributes his independent insight and experience. Consensus should not come out of fear or conformity; the fact that he found the tendency to conform was strong even among intelligent people raised questions about societal values and the quality of education.
Asch’s conclusions note the power (and danger) of social influence to shape a person’s beliefs and behavior. If something becomes normal for a group, social pressure will ensure conformity. Inspired by Asch’s theory, Stanley Milgram’s experiment on obedience showed that ordinary people are capable of cruelty when under pressure to conform.
However, the majority of participants in Asch’s study, even those who had conformed, stated that they valued independence of mind, leaving him optimistic about humanity.
US Senator Joseph McCarthy launched a Communist witch hunt during the 1950s, generating an environment of fear and high levels of political and social conformity.
"A member of a tribe of cannibals accepts cannibalism as altogether fitting and proper."
Solomon Asch
SOLOMON ASCH
Solomon Elliott Asch was a pioneer in the field of social psychology. He was born into a Jewish family in Warsaw (then part of the Russian Empire) in 1907. At the age of 13 he emigrated to the US and studied psychology. He received a PhD in 1932 from Columbia University, where he was influenced by Max Wertheimer.
Asch became a professor at Swarthmore College in 1947, and worked closely with Wolfgang Köhler. He held visiting posts at Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard, where he supervised Stanley Milgram’s Ph.D., before moving to the University of Pennsylvania. His many awards include the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association. He died aged 88.
Key works
1951 Effects of Group Pressure Upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgment
1952 Social Psychology
1955 Opinions and Social Pressure
1956 Studies of Independence and Conformity
See also: Serge Moscovici • Stanley Milgram • Philip Zimbardo • Max Wertheimer • Muzafer Sherif
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Impression management
BEFORE
1890 William James first makes the distinction between the private self-as-subject (“I”) and the public self-as-object (“me”).
1902 American sociologist Charles Cooley posits the looking-glass self theory, which states that the self is reflected in the reactions of other people.
AFTER
1990 US psychologists Mark Leary and Robin Kowalski define three ways in which impression management can increase well-being: belonging, self-enhancement, and self-understanding.
1995 Psychologist Sarah Hampson argues that our behavior changes according to who we are with, and different people bring out various aspects of our personality.
Devised by Erving Goffman, impression management is a theory that relates to how we create, maintain, and enhance our social identities. A fundamental aspect of social interaction, Goffman says, is that we try—either consciously or subconsciously—to manipulate and control the way that others perceive us. Whenever we interact with other people, we present a public image of ourselves. In some instances, we may be trying to influence a particular person (such as a job interviewer); in other situations, we may simply be trying to maintain a favorable image of ourselves. In his 1959 book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman draws a parallel between impression management and theater, showing how the ways we present ourselves in the real world are similar to the performances of dramatic actors on stage. Each social interaction is driven as much toward having a particular effect on the audience as it is toward honest self-expression.
In fact, according to Goffman’s theory, personality is the sum of the various roles that a person plays in his or her life. This implies that the true self is not a private or internal phenomenon, but rather the dramatic effect of the ways in which a person presents himself publicly. “Life is a dramatically enacted thing,” Goffman says: creating a successful impression requires the right setting, props, wardrobe, skills, and a shared understanding of what constitutes being on stage (in the public sphere) versus backstage (in the personal, private sphere).
