Introduction

Dramaturgy is a sociological viewpoint often used in micrological accounts of the social relations in everyday life. It is believed that the components of the human interactions rely on place time and audience. People often present their ideologies and views in the form of drama in the sociological perspectives as an emphasis of their implication. The paper looks at the Asch and Milgram’s experiments that explain the trends in the interaction of people in the societies, considering the association with social theories such as functionalism, conflict theory, and the interactionism.

Stanley Milgram Experiments

Stanley Milgram’s experiment studies the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram had the interest of exploring how people go on obeying the instruction especially if they involve harming someone else. His findings conformed to the case of World War II in German in which ordinary people committed autocracies (Gridley et al. pg. 1).  He showed that people adhere to orders by a power figure to a level of even killing innocent people. The experiment shows how much pain ordinary citizens inflict in other people simply because they are following orders. The legal, philosophical aspects of submission are of enormous imports and say little about how people behave in concrete situations. People obey the laws that other people give them in fear of their positions if they recognize their power as morally right. The response to authority is realized in different situations such as in school or workplaces.

How the Scientific Community Overreacted to Milgram’s Theory

The scientific community has exaggerated this experiment on the account that it has contributed to most crimes in history such as the case of genocide in Germany where the authority influenced the citizens to attack the other communities. The fear of the power initiates conflicts among people constituting to civil wars that are experienced in most countries today. Researchers should venture a lot in the influence of the authority but with the agenda of finding how the authority position may be positive or negative. As well, the researchers can also see the solution to the fear of the authority and initiate respect but not fear. Such would help prevent the issues of quarrels based on the influence of the power on people.

Asch Experiment

Solomon Asch experimented to reveal the degree to an individual opinion is influenced by a group. He realized people could easily ignore the reality and provide a false answer to match with the rest of the group. The Asch theory, referred to as the conformity experiment, addresses the tendency of people to adhere to unspoken rules and behaviors of the social groups which they belong (Fujita et al., pg. 396). The conformity has been an issue with researchers, who have been sourcing the pressure that social groups have to individual’s decisions. The finding of Asch experiment showed that 75% of the people conform to the ideologies of a group and a greater tendency to which the group that people follow may be false (Fujita et al., pg. 396). The experiment looks at the mechanisms in which the pressure from a group could make people conform, even if they are aware that the group ideologies are untrue.

Why Groups Have Influence Over Us?

The structural functionalism theory explains how stratified social groups of a community serve a conventional role. A prosperous society should have a balance of all the subparts where the laws of the central government are equally regulated. Right social functionalism can address the issues of the influence of the authority to parts of society.  On the other hand, the symbolic interactionism shows the relationship of various groups of the society inclusive of the indifference that occurs. The theory is useful in the Asch experiment as the inequalities of subgroups should guide people on the associations. The conflict theory explains how the capitalist societies, as one group gathers significant benefits while the other rarely survives. Indeed, the theory asserts that substantial parts of the government are regulated by minority groups that utilize authorities and laws to protect their interests.

Conclusion

The two experiments show how the association of people in a community is trained. Asch and Milgram’s interest in studying the motivators of behavior, which is the authority and groups, have offered a clear reason of why people behave variedly. The sociological theories have also been addressed, and their influence on Asch and Milgram’s experiment shown providing the basis for the often sociological patterns.

Work cited

Fujita, Yuki, and Kazuo Mori. “Group versus Individual Reward in the Asch Experiment without Confederates.” Open Journal of Social Sciences 5.05 (2017): 396.

Gridley, Mark, and William J. Jenkins. Obedience to Authority. Macat Library, 2017.