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Asch Conformity Experiments
The Asch Conformity experiments, published
in 1951, were a series of studies that demonstrated the power of Conformity in
groups.
The cards used in the experiment.
The card on the left has the reference line and the one on the right shows
the three comparison lines.
Experimenters
led by Solomon Asch asked students to participate in a "vision test."
In reality, all but one of the participants were confederates of the
experimenter, and the study was really about how the remaining student would
react to the confederates' behaviour.
The
participants ? the real subject and the confederates ? were all seated in a
classroom where they were told to announce their judgment of the length of
several lines drawn on a series of displays. They were asked which line was
longer than the other, which were the same length, etc. The confederates had
been prearranged to all give an incorrect answer to the tests.
While
most subjects answered correctly, many showed extreme discomfort, and a high
proportion (33%) conformed to the erroneous majority view of the others in the
room when there were at least three confederates present, even when the
majority said that two lines different in length by several inches were the
same length. When the confederates were not unanimous in their judgment,
subjects were much more likely to defect than when the confederates all agreed.
Control subjects with no exposure to a majority view had no trouble giving the
correct answer.
