Solomon Eliot Asch (1907-1996) was a
Polish-American gestalt psychologist and pioneer in social psychology. He created pieces of work in impression formation, prestige suggestion, conformity, and many other topics in social psychology. Solomon Asch conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform. In 1951, he created and conducted a social psychology experiment, where he asked a participant to give an answer, while the rest of the group disagreed with them to see how much the participant would give into group pressure. Experimental ProcedureHe used a lab experiment with 50 male students from Swarthmore College and told them that they were participating in a vision test. Using a line judgment task, he put the participant with seven other students who were part of the experiment. The seven students agreed in advanced what their answer would be when presented with the line task. The participant thought that they were all participating in the experiment. The experimenter stood in the front of the room and held up a display with one comparison line and the students were told to choose the line (out of three) that was the same length. Each person in the room would state their answer line (A, B, or C) out loud. The real participant was sat at the end of the row and would give their answer last. There were 18 trials in total and the seven students who were in on the experiment purposely gave the wrong answer 12 times. The point of the experiment was to see if the real participant would give the right answer or if they would conform to the majority. There was also another experiment where there were no other students who were part of the experiment, just a real participant. Here is a YouTube video of a clip from the experiment: LINK  FindingsAsch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about 1/3 of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority. Throughout 12 trials, about 3/4 of participants conformed at least once and 1/4 of participants never conformed. In the control group where there was no pressure from other students who were part of the experiment, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer. ConclusionWhen participants were interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that they did not believe their conforming answers, but they went along with the group out of fear of being ridiculed. A few of them stated that they really thought that the group’s answer was correct. The experiment concluded that people conform for two main reasons: they want to fit in with the group (normative influence) and because they believe the group is more informed than they are (informational influence). References Asch, S. E. (1951). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgment. In H. Guetzkow (ed.) Groups, leadership and men. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Press. Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological monographs: General and applied, 70(9), 1-70. Asch (1951) conducted one of the most famous laboratory experiments examining conformity. He wanted to examine the extent to which social pressure from a majority, could affect a person to conform. Asch’s sample consisted of 50 male students from Swarthmore College in America, who believed they were taking part in a vision test. Asch used a line judgement task, where he placed on real naïve participants in a room with seven confederates (actors), who had agreed their answers in advance. The real participant was deceived and was led to believe that the other seven people were also real participants. The real participant always sat second to last. In turn, each person had to say out loud which line (A, B or C) was most like the target line in length.
Unlike Jenness’ experiment, the correct answer was always obvious. Each participant completed 18 trials and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trials, called critical trials. Asch wanted to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view, even when the answer was clearly incorrect. Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 32% of the critical trials. 74% of the participants conformed on at least one critical trial and 26% of the participants never conformed. Asch also used a control group, in which one real participant completed the same experiment without any confederates. He found that less than 1% of the participants gave an incorrect answer. Asch interviewed his participants after the experiment to find out why they conformed. Most of the participants said that they knew their answers were incorrect, but they went along with the group in order to fit in, or because they thought they would be ridiculed. This confirms that participants conformed due to normative social influence and the desire to fit in. Evaluation of AschAsch used a biased sample of 50 male students from Swarthmore College in America. Therefore, we cannot generalise the results to other populations, for example female students, and we are unable to conclude if female students would have conformed in a similar way to male students. As a result Asch’s sample lacks population validity and further research is required to determine whether males and females conform differently Furthermore, it could be argued that Asch’s experiment has low levels of ecological validity. Asch’s test of conformity, a line judgement task, is an artificial task, which does not reflect conformity in everyday life. Consequently, we are unable to generalise the results of Asch to other real life situations, such as why people may start smoking or drinking around friends, and therefore these results are limited in their application to everyday life. Finally, Asch’s research is ethically questionable. He broke several ethical guidelines, including: deception and protection from harm. Asch deliberately deceived his participants, saying that they were taking part in a vision test and not an experiment on conformity. Although it is seen as unethical to deceive participants, Asch’s experiment required deception in order to achieve valid results. If the participants were aware of the true aim they would have displayed demand characteristics and acted differently. In addition, Asch’s participants were not protected from psychological harm and many of the participants reporting feeling stressed when they disagreed with the majority. However, Asch interviewed all of his participants following the experiment to overcome this issue. What did Asch's conformity experiment show?The experiments revealed the degree to which a person's own opinions are influenced by those of a group. Asch found that people were willing to ignore reality and give an incorrect answer in order to conform to the rest of the group.
What did Solomon Asch measure in his study of conformity?Key Points. The Asch conformity experiments consisted of a group “vision test”, where study participants were found to be more likely to conform to obviously wrong answers if first given by other “participants”, who were actually working for the experimenter.
Which of the following is demonstrated by the Asch experiment?1 Answer. Simply they were a series of studies that demonstrated the power of conformity in groups. (Asch) for Milgram it was Obedience.
Where was the Asch conformity experiment?In 1951, Asch conducted his first conformity laboratory experiments at Swarthmore College, laying the foundation for his remaining conformity studies. The experiment was published on two occasions.
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Research participants believed that the Asch conformity test involved a study of
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