I’ve never really understood the effect you can have on people until I listened to the podcast “The Influence You Have.” The podcast speaks about various experiments and how it shows the effects that peer pressure has on individuals. The one experiment results that really shocked me (no pun intended) was Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment. Even though the subject could hear the screams of the person in the other room they continue to administer the shocks because they believe that it is part of the experiment. When asking one of the subjects why he didn’t stop administering the shocks, he gets defensive and blames it on the experimenters. The experimenters never forced the subjects to give the shocks to the person in the other room, but somehow around 65% of the people end up giving the highest voltage to the other participant. This wasn’t the only experiment spoken about in the podcast. Whether it was asking complete strangers for their seat on the subway, asking for a donation, or even vandalizing a library there was a genuine disbelief for how many people agreed to do it because they were asked to. This comes to prove that there is an innate discomfort with saying no and that people will even cross moral lines in order to avoid saying no.
This podcast really resonated with me because I have fallen under the spell of peer pressure multiple times. I remember one time my friends wanted to go out for dinner, and it wasn’t in my best financial interest to go out that night. Though I’d like to believe I was hesitant about the idea looking back I didn’t really object with anything more than a “maybe we should go for dinner a different night”, but even then I felt a bit uncomfortable because I didn’t want to ruin it for everyone else.
One time I didn’t realize the power of my words was when I ate dinner by a friend’s house, and I told my mom that I liked one of the dishes that was prepared. Unaware of my mom’s competitive nature for cooking she immediately called up my friend’s mom and got the recipe for the dish. She ends up making the dish and asks if she makes it as good as my friend’s mom. I then realized that my comment about the dished caused my mom to feel bad about her food, even though I tell her all the time she the best chef in the world.
Isaac when looking over your post I found the part about the people blaming what they were doing on the experimenters even though they were never forced to do anything. They didn’t want to say no, so they decided on their own to continue. It made me think about if I’ve ever done something like that, which I probably have. When you’re in a tricky situation and you don’t want to tell someone no, you have to remember there is no blaming others, because in the end we all control our own actions.
Your point about people crossing moral lines to avoid saying no really surprised me because I had always thought of morals as this bottom line that people will always try to protect. However, I could understand how that would be the case because I too, would probably agree to do what was being asked of me as a result of the social pressure. Your example about going out to eat was also super relatable. However, despite now knowing the influence of other people of me and my influence on others, I’m still not sure how and if I could refuse to go to dinner.
I was really surprised by the statistic that 65% of the participants gave the highest voltage during the Milgram experiment. To think that there were probably a lot of other participants that agreed to high voltages, but not to the highest voltage before they refused, is shocking to think about. It’s so easy to think that if we were in that situation that we would be able to say no to the experimenter, because that would be morally correct, but we will never know the pressure the participant felt until we are in the participant’s position.
Your argument about how our inability to say ‘no’ even if it is against our morals is interesting. I had not thought about it until now, but it seems people by nature want to be appreciated, and that comes from doing what is asked of you. Far too often, people try to please someone who doesn’t care for them, as in the case of the Milgram experiment.