In 1951, Dr. Solomon Asch, a professor at Swarthmore College, sought to evaluate how social pressure would influence a person to conform with a majority group. Each participant of the experiment was brought in amongst seven actors and was told they were there for a “vision test”. The group of eight were then showed pictures of lines of various lengths and were asked which line matched the standard line (a choice that was obvious).

The actors were told to confidently give the wrong answer and then the real participant would be the last one asked to respond. Surprisingly, about 32% of all participant’s answers would conform with the actor’s wrong answer and 75% of participants conformed at least once. Although this study had a biased sample of only white college men, its results still have validity. We all have felt the effects of peer pressure at some point in our life, and this experiment makes it evident how easy it is to submit to this pressure.

After reading this study, a long-forgotten memory of mine sparked back into my head. When I was in third grade, I was taking a standardized test which I believe was relatively important. Sitting at the desk across from mine was my best friend at the time who was also taking the test. The test was maybe an hour in length, and I was overwhelming confident in my answers and stood up to turn in my test. As I stood up, whether it was intentional or unintentional, I glanced at my best friend who was still hard at work on the last page. I happened to see his answer at the top of the page, which did not match the answer choice I had circled. I immediately sat down trying my best to not look suspicious. I reread the question which asked for the width of a door. I had circled 3 feet, but my friend had circled 3 meters. I sat there, staring at the classroom door for several minutes, completely puzzled. While I thought, my friend, as well as almost all the other students, were turning in their tests. Panic rushed through me, I changed my answer, and I turned it in. Guilt flowed through me like I had never experienced before, and the only thing keeping me from breaking was the fact that maybe my answer would be correct now.

I went home that afternoon and started tossing a baseball in my backyard with my father. I tried my best to casually bring up the question in our conversation. “Obviously 3 feet, why do you ask?” he said. After I heard those words, I took off for my room where a sobbed for several minutes. It taught me a hard (well, hard for a third grader), but valuable lesson.

The Asch Conformity study allowed me to understand the psychological stress affecting my young brain in this memory. The relevance of this study is apparent in most of our lives, no matter how old we are. It can be hard to trust ourselves instead of the majority or our friends. Whether it be our ideas on politics, religion, our favorite food, you name it, we should remind ourselves that those ideas are valid.