http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyDDyT1lDhA

Welcome Back! I’m here again this week to talk about the well-known and interesting experiments done by Solomon Asch throughout the 1950’s. The Polish-American psychologist conducted an experiment to understand the amount of social pressure it takes in order for an individual to conform in a classroom setting. Conformity is “a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group”. Asch picked seven men in which all agreed on the same responses to questions regarding line segments. To make things interesting, an additional ‘real’, naive participant was included without any knowledge about the experiment! The naive individual was told this was all part of a vision test. That particular individual would be considered the control in the experiment. As they each sat in a line, the participants were asked to compare line segments A, B, and C to the original ‘target’ line. These instructions were applied to all 50 of the males who got the opportunity to go through this trial.

Each individual gave their same response and it all came down to the real participant’s answer who sat at the very end of the line. The experiment involved asking about eighteen different questions, but twelve of which were purposely answered incorrectly in hopes of seeing if the real participant would answer the same anyway. Imagine how it feels to be the only person with a different answer! I know for a fact that I, too would be a little confused on whether I’m wrong since everybody else shared the same answers repeatedly. 

After trying the experiment out a few times, Solomon concluded that a majority of the time the real participant agreed with the others even if they knew the answer was incorrect. Questions sparked as Asch wanted to know why the participants were so easily tricked into conforming.  To further understand, the ‘real’ participant would be interviewed. It was said that the reason behind their choices was because they felt strange for being the only individual with a different answer from the rest of the group. They were fearful that they would be looked upon as being different. Other people claimed that they actually thought the answers the others picked were correct. To further test this theory, the same participants were asked to write down their answers individually. When the ‘real’ participants didn’t have to give their answer aloud, but instead of the paper it was found that their answers were correct and different.  So, it was clear that these two findings explained why people tend to conform when being involved with a group of people. 

Websites Used:

Solomon Asch Conformity Line Experiment Study

https://www.verywellmind.com/the-asch-conformity-experiments-2794996