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Social psychologistSolomon Aschis most famous for conducting what has become known as ‘The Asch Conformity Experiments.’ The aim of these experiments was to determine whether social pressure could cause a person to say something that was obviously wrong in the presence of other conformists.
The Experiment’s Structure
The test subject, who had been told that he was going to participate in a vision test, was put into a group with one or more other people who he believed were also test subjects. All of the other people were, however, aware of the experiment’s objective and had been coached on how to answer the test questions. The test itself consisted of the entire group being shown one card with a line on it and then another card with three lines of differing lengths.
All participants were then asked which of the three lines the individual line equaled in length, with the test subject always being asked last or second to last. Sometimes his companions gave the correct answer and sometimes they did not, and the test’s aim was to record how many times the test subject gave the same wrong answer as his companions. All in all, each group completed 18 separate tests.
Results of the Experiment
Asch’s basic findings were that: – 75% of the test subjects conformed by agreeing with group’s incorrect answer at least once; – 25% of the test subjects never conformed and never agreed with the group’s incorrect answer; and – 5% of the test subjects always conformed and always agreed with the group’s incorrect answer. When the three results were averaged, it was noted that the test subjects conformed to the incorrect answer 33% of the time.
Asch also found that the conformity rate was significantly reduced when even one of the test subject’s companions gave the right answer. This indicated that the pressure to conform was apparently far less when the control group was indecisive. A further finding was that whether or not the test subject gave an incorrect answer depended on how many people his group contained. If the group comprised of just him and a companion, he would always give the correct answer, but as the number of companions increased, and provided they all gave the same incorrect answer, so would the number of instances where he would answer incorrectly.
The test subjects were also made to take a written version of the test and it was observed that, in the written tests, they chose the correct answer 98% of the time. This indicated that, in most cases, they had deliberately chosen incorrect answers during the verbal test and had not just made mistakes.
Interpretation of Test Results
The test subjects deliberately chose incorrect answers as they wanted to conform, as they did not want to be different and as they wanted to fit in. They also did not want to be ridiculed by their peers nor did they want to be deemed peculiar, or strange, by their peers. This choice of action – knowing that something is wrong but agreeing to it anyway – indicates the extent of the pressure to conform.
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