Solomon Asch On Conformity

In 1932, Jenness conducted the first study of conformity. The experiment was ambiguous as there was no right or wrong answer. The study focused on the participants' estimates on the number of beans in a bottle. Firstly, Jenness asked his participants to individually estimate the number of beans. He then gathered the group and got them to examine the contents. Finally, the researcher once again asked individuals for an estimate and observed that nearly all the individuals changed their original estimates to be closer to the group estimate, therefore showing a level of conformity.

In 1951, Solomon Asch carried out several experiments on conformity. The aim of these studies was to investigate conformity in a group environment situation. The purpose of these experiments was to see if an individual would be swayed by public pressure to go along with the incorrect answer. Asch believed that conformity reflects on relatively rational process in which people are pressured to change their behaviour. Asch designed experiments to measure the pressure of a group situation upon an individual judgment. Asch wanted to prove that conformity can really play a big role in disbelieving our own senses.

Asch’s experiment was performed in 1951 and is now a classic experiment in psychology. Asch asked individuals a simple question and a high percentage answered correctly. Then Asch placed a participant in a room with seven actors who had predetermined incorrect answers. When asked in front of the group, 75% of people would give incorrect answers clearly because of they conformed to the actors around them. Asch then concluded that it is natural for one to conform to society in order to fit

Solomon Asch tested conformity at Swarthmore College in 1951 by putting a participant in a group of people whose task was to match line lengths. Each individual was expected to announce which of three lines was the closest in length to a reference line. But the participant was placed in a group of actors, who were all told to give the correct answer twice then switch to each saying the same incorrect answer. Asch wanted to see whether the participant would conform and start to give the wrong answer as well, knowing that he would otherwise be a single outlier.

The acts of conforming and obeying shape us significantly, whether we are conscious of it or not. They do so in ways that psychologists Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram attempt to explain through their research. Asch touches base on the topic of conformity and discusses the ways in which group behaviors and social norms can influence the decisions an individual makes. On the other hand, Milgram’s focus is on obedience, and he studied it by measuring average, everyday people and their willingness to obey authority figures, even if it involves actions that go against their personal beliefs and morals. They have provided evidence through experiments, and with this information, it becomes easier to understand the world of politics, and how these

Solomon Asch set up a laboratory experiment using deception and confederates to determine what factors were involved in conformity and individual decisions in group decisions. Asch instructed subjects to choose which of three lines was the same length as the original line shown. Each subject was on a panel with seven other subjects, however in reality were confederates. The experimenter demonstrated the two cards and asked the individuals to choose the line on the comparison card that is the same length as the standard line. In the second trial the process was repeated again. However, on the third trial, when the card is revealed everyone gave wrong answers. The results indicate that approximately 75% of the subjects went with the group’s

Conformity is a situation of changing one’s behavior in order to match the actions of the society around the person. The social influence cause people to agree or even behave like the majority of the people in the specific group so that the group can perceive them as normal. Solomon Asch (1956) was interested to know the act of people in conformity pressure. Because of that, he created an experiment to investigate the process by asking college students in a group of eight to match the lengths of different lines. The experiment shows that 95% of the students correctly match 12 lines without pressure of group. Ash repeats the experiment by changing the situation. The students now need to hear answers of five other people who are actually confederates

Solomon Asch 's (1951) conformity experiment is the study of people adapting their behaviours in order to follow the social normalities. This experiment entails a group of people who are actors and know about the experiment, and one person who is unknowing of the experiment, which are all in the same room. The group is shown a pair of cards; card A has a line on the card, and card B has three lines varying in length on the card, the similarities of the lines are obvious. The group individually, saying out loud picks one of the three lines on card B that matches the length of the line on card A. Everybody picks the correct line, this happens for a few rounds, then when shown another pair of cards the first actor chooses the wrong line on card B. The rest of the actors choose the same line the first actor chose, this tests to see if the unknowing participant will choose the same answer as the group (McLeod, 2008). The person who is unknowing of the

All of the yielding subjects underestimated the frequency with which they conformed. Asch also considered which aspect of the majority was most influential—the size of the majority or its unanimity? The experiment was then modified by adding between one to 15 persons in opposition to the individual. The results showed a clear trend; with just one in opposition there was little change in answers. When the opposition increased to two the pressure suddenly became substantial with subjects accepting wrong answers 13.6 percent of the time.

Asch’s Conformity Study (1955) shows us how social influence can alter behaviour. On the video one reason a participant gave for conforming was that they wanted to avoid going against the group (Asch, HeroicImaginationTV, 2012, Asch Conformity Experiment, [Video File] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyDDyT1lDhA). Whilst I was working on a construction site on a remote island off the coast of Western Australia I observed that when workers exited either the plane or bus they would file off one by one from the first seat backwards in order. This may not seem too strange but after observing this I made a point to take notice when on commercial airlines and buses and noted that everyone seemed to get up and make their

Being that conformity was an important topic, many researchers conducted studies that had consistently supported the theory that the more people there are in a group, the more likely a person is to conform. Researchers Stanley Milgram, Lionnel Dannick, Leon Mann, James W. Newton, and Eddie Tong, carried out different observational experiments that produced similar results about the power of conformity. Stanley Milgram’s study on conformity was an observational study in which confederates stopped and would stare up at a window of a building for 60 seconds. Judges recorded all of the people who walked by, and counted how many citizens looked up or stopped and looked at the window. The results from his study indicated that when there were more confederates in a group, people were more likely to

Studies have been conducted and poems have been written about our instinct to conform and how it could affect the future. Solomon E. Asch, a social psychologist, conducted one of these studies. The experiments, which examined a person’s responses when faced with social pressure, consisted of a group of people that were shown two cards: one with one line drawn on it and another card with 3 or more lines drawn on it. The subjects were to respond which line on the second card was the same length of the line on the first card. However, not all of the participants were actual subjects.

Solomon Asch’s study on conformity displays a common occurrence of our behavior, when interacting with others. A experience of mine were I conformed to an idea, due to everyone else choosing that idea occurred during a debate in one my history classes. The debate was based around Genghis Khan and whether his actions and legacies make him an evil or good person. During each round of the debate one of the opposing sides would present an idea fighting for their side, which for the team opposing me was that he was an evil person. They presented the idea that Khan never established a social order within his empire. For my sides rebuttal they chose to provide evidence of increased social order after his conquering, but did not necessarily bring up

There is a fundamental human need to belong to social groups especially if people were to live and work together, it is likely that they need to agree on common beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviours in order to get along and fit-in. Thus, we learnt to conform to rules of other people, the more people see others behaving in a particular way or making particular decisions, the more likely people will feel obliged to follow the suit. This is called conformity and can be defined in different ways, Aronson, Wilson & Akert (2014) stated it is the changing of one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. According to Deutsch and Gerard (1955), social influence should be distinguished into two types, the informational social influence and normative social influence. The occurrence of social influence has implied to many real life events, which has drawn many researchers to attention. This has lead many researchers to design distinct experiments to try and understand the cause of the conformity, whether conformity is situation dependent, and whether we are able to resist social influences.

Solomon Asch was a psychologist that conduced numerous expirments designed to illustrate the increasing conformity within social groups. The experiments also invesigated the effect the number of people present within the group had one the conformity rate. Asch hypothesized, “ that the majority of the people would not conform to something obviosly wrong; however, when surrounded by (other) individuals all voicing an incorrect answer, 75% of them(the participant) will conform to the groups answer” (Watzlawick 1976)