Chapter 65. Conformity: The Asch Experiment

Learning Objectives

conformity

changing our thinking or our behavior to match a group standard

experiment

a method of research that manipulates an independent variable to measure its effect on a dependent variable

perception

organizing and interpreting information from the senses to understand its meaning

Сonformity: The Asch Experiment

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Learning Objectives:

Describe the results of the Solomon Asch experiment on conformity.

Identify social situations that create strong pressure to conform to a group standard.

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1. One of the most important principles in psychology is the power of social influence. The behavior of other people affects our behavior, and we feel pressure to make our actions match those of the people around us. This is called conformity—adjusting our thinking or behavior to coincide with a group standard.

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2. The pressure to conform is very strong in ambiguous situations. If you don't know what to do, the best advice is to watch what others are doing and then imitate them. For example, if you don’t know which fork to use for each course of a banquet, you would probably conform to the behavior of the people around you.

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3. But what about unambiguous situations? Research by social psychologist Solomon Asch was the first to demonstrate that people will conform to a group's judgment even if that judgment is clearly wrong. In Asch’s famous experiment, groups of six or seven people were given a visual perception test. Each participant was asked to decide which of three comparison lines was the same length as a standard line, and then call out that judgment for the experimenter to record.

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4. All but one of the participants in each testing group was paid by the experimenter to give the wrong answer on some trials, such as claiming that line 3 is the correct answer in this example. Surprisingly, more than two-thirds of the “real” participants gave in to group pressure on at least some of the trials. They denied the evidence from their own eyes, and conformed by agreeing with the group’s incorrect answer.

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5. Asch found that the pressure to conform was greatest when the behavior was public and the group was unanimous. If even one other person defied the group, the "real" participant was empowered to give the correct answer rather than go along with the group's incorrect answer. If the “real” participant could answer privately, that person almost always gave the correct answer.

Practice 1: Simulating the Asch Experiment

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Practice 1: Simulating the Asch Experiment

Select the PLAY button to view an animation of the first two trials of the experiment.

The figure has a square table with two individuals seated on three of the sides. The six participants are numbered 1 through 6 starting on the left and going clockwise. Participant 5 is the real participant in the study. When the simulation is played, the experimenter starts Tria l 1 and a figure is presented. The figure has two columns. In the first column there is a long vertical green line that is labeled Standard line. The second column has three vertical green lines. The first one is a medium length line, the second one is a long line, and the third one is a medium-long line. These lines are labeled as Comparison lin es. Participants are asked which line is closest in length to the standard line. Starting with participant 1, each states that the correct line is 2.Then the experimenter star ts Trial 2 and a different figure is presented. The figure has two columns. In the first column there is a medium vertical green line that is labeled Standard line. The se cond column has three vertical green lines. The first one is a long line, the second one is a medium-long line, and the third one is a medium line. These lines are labeled as Comparison lines. Participants are asked which line is closest in length to the standard line. Starting with participant 1, each states that the correct line is 3. So far, so good. All the participants are calling out the correct answer. But what will happen when the experimenter's accomplices begin calling out the wrong answer? Select the Next button to find out.

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Here are the six participants in Asch's study. The experimenter has explained the instructions, and the participants are ready to begin the experiment. The person with the brown shirt (in position 5) is the only real participant—all the others are accomplices of the experimenter who have been instructed to give the correct answer for the first two trials, and the wrong answer for all remaining trials.

Practice 2: The Critical Trials

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Practice 2: The Critical Trials

Select the PLAY button to view an animation of the next four trials of the experiment.

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How would you respond when the other people in the group begin giving the wrong answer? Would you stand firm and ignore the others, or would you cave in to group pressure and conform to the group's judgment? For Asch, the next several trials were critical for finding the answer to these questions.

Practice 3: The Results

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Practice 3: The Results

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Asch found that, when the accomplices unanimously agreed on an obviously incorrect judgment, the real participants conformed to the group decision and reported the group's wrong answer more than one-third of the time. Apparently, the desire to be "like everybody else" was more powerful than the desire to be accurate.

The real participants had an error rate of 37 percent in this group setting, compared with an error rate of less than 1 percent when other participants were tested individually on this same task.

Even more striking, in the group setting, 74 percent of the real participants conformed on at least one of the critical trials!

Quiz 1

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Try to respond to the statements again.

Quiz 1

Select a button to indicate whether each statement is True or False. When responses have been placed for all the statements, select the CHECK ANSWER button.

True	False
		Some of the participants in the Asch experiment were paid by the experimenter to give the correct answer on every trial.
		Asch told the participants in the Asch experiment that the experiment was about visual perception, when it was really about conformity.
		Solomon Asch found that people tend to follow the group in ambiguous situations, but not when the correct answer is unambiguous.

Quiz 2

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Quiz 2

Answer the question. Then, select the CHECK ANSWER button.

Try to answer the question again.

The group is unanimous and there is time for group pressure to influence the real participant. Select the NEXT button and move to the Conclusion.

The following experiment scenarios are variations on the original Asch experiment. There is only one real participant. The others are accomplices paid to give a specified answer. All participants answered in order (1 through 6).

Experiment 1: The real participant was seated in position 5. Everything was identical to the original Asch experiment, except that the person in position 2 always gave the correct answer.

Experiment 2: The real participant was seated in position 1. Everything else was identical to the original Asch experiment.

Experiment 3: The real participant was seated in position 5. Everything was identical to the original Asch experiment, except that the experiment had already started by the time the real participant arrived, so the real participant was allowed to write the answers on paper rather than call them out.

Experiment 4: The real participant was seated in position 6. Everything else was identical to the original Asch experiment.

Which of these four experiment scenarios would produce results most similar to the results from Asch's original experiment?

Experiment 1

Experiment 2

Experiment 3

Experiment 4

Conclusion

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