Peer Pressure

Abstract

I found it interesting how many people fall victim to the effects of peer pressure, and that is exactly why I decided to test more about it. I predicted that when the percentage of popularity was shown, it would sway the opinion of the participants so they would pick the pictures with higher percentages.

I first started by choosing participants to test, labeled Subject 1-5, and got signed consent forms from each one. Then, they were each tested, one at a time. The procedure called for 50 random pictures that were put into 10 groups of 5. I then asked each participant their opinion on which was their favorite out of each group. However, each picture included a fake percentage of votes to show which pictures were said to be the most popular. For the first 5 groups, I did not reveal the percent to the participants so therefore there would be no correlation in their results. However, on the other 5 groups, I did reveal the percentages, so this should sway the averages higher to show if the participant follows a big group of people, or lower to show that the person is a leader or a loner and they prefer to either stay away from most people, or try to get more people to come with them.

After all of the testing, the average percent for Subject 1 was 18.5%, the average not showing percent is 17%, and the average showing percent is 20%. The average in total for Subject 2 was 17%, 18% not showing percent, and 16% showing percent. For Subject 3, the average in total is 20.5%, not showing percent is 23%, and showing percent is 18%. The average for Subject 4 in total is 18.5%, 18% not showing percent, and 19% showing percent. Finally, the average percent in total for Subject 5 is 18.5%, not showing percent is 20%, and the average showing percent is 17%.

From my testing, I concluded that showing the percent of popularity did sway the opinion of all of the participants. However, it didn’t always make them choose the more popular ones, but instead some went to the less popular ones. Subjects 1 and 4 had a greater number when shown percent, so they were affected by the larger group of people. On the other hand, Subjects 2, 3, and 5 had a smaller number when shown the percent, and this shows they were affected by the smaller groups of people. Either way, both of these results show the effects of peer pressure and my tests were successful. I think I could have improved this experiment by adding more pictures and more participants to get a more accurate result.

Data Table