The asch experiment: group pressure and visual judgment

Solomon Asch’s experiments on conformity are iconic studies in social psychology that demonstrated how pressure from a majority group can lead individuals to deny the evidence of their own senses and settle for a clearly incorrect answer.

Experimental Design: The Line Comparison Task

Asch designed a seemingly simple visual judgment task.

Participants were shown a standard line and then three comparison lines, and asked to indicate which of the three comparison lines was the same length as the standard line.

The task was easy and the correct answer was obvious.

However, the naive participant performed this task in a group where the other members (who were actually confederates of the experimenter) unanimously gave incorrect answers on a series of critical trials.

The naive participant responded after having heard the incorrect answers from the majority of the group.

Surprising Results: The Power of the Majority

Despite the clarity of the correct answer, Asch found that a significant proportion of participants conformed to the majority group's incorrect answer at least once.

Approximately 76% of participants conformed on at least one trial, and on average, participants conformed about 37% of the time on critical trials.

This was in sharp contrast to a control group performing the task individually, where errors were virtually nonexistent.

These results demonstrated the power of group pressure to influence individual judgment, even when physical reality is clear and obvious.

Reasons for Conformity

Subsequent interviews with participants revealed different reasons for their conformity:

• Some went so far as to doubt their own senses and believe that the majority was right (informational social influence, although less predominant in this clear situation).

• The majority, however, conformed to avoid ridicule, disapproval, or rejection from the group, despite knowing internally that the