Research participants believed that the Asch conformity test involved a study of
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Solomon Eliot Asch (1907-1996) was a
Polish-American gestalt psychologist and pioneer in social psychology. He created pieces of work in impression formation, prestige suggestion, conformity, and many other topics in social psychology. Solomon Asch conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform. In 1951, he created and conducted a social psychology experiment, where he asked a participant to give an answer, while the rest of the group disagreed with them to see how much the participant would give into group pressure. Experimental ProcedureHe used a lab experiment with 50 male students from Swarthmore College and told them that they were participating in a vision test. Using a line judgment task, he put the participant with seven other students who were part of the experiment. The seven students agreed in advanced what their answer would be when presented with the line task. The participant thought that they were all participating in the experiment. The experimenter stood in the front of the room and held up a display with one comparison line and the students were told to choose the line (out of three) that was the same length. Each person in the room would state their answer line (A, B, or C) out loud. The real participant was sat at the end of the row and would give their answer last. There were 18 trials in total and the seven students who were in on the experiment purposely gave the wrong answer 12 times. The point of the experiment was to see if the real participant would give the right answer or if they would conform to the majority. There was also another experiment where there were no other students who were part of the experiment, just a real participant. Here is a YouTube video of a clip from the experiment: LINK FindingsAsch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about 1/3 of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority. Throughout 12 trials, about 3/4 of participants conformed at least once and 1/4 of participants never conformed. In the control group where there was no pressure from other students who were part of the experiment, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer. ConclusionWhen participants were interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that they did not believe their conforming answers, but they went along with the group out of fear of being ridiculed. A few of them stated that they really thought that the group’s answer was correct. The experiment concluded that people conform for two main reasons: they want to fit in with the group (normative influence) and because they believe the group is more informed than they are (informational influence). References Asch, S. E. (1951). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgment. In H. Guetzkow (ed.) Groups, leadership and men. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Press. Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological monographs: General and applied, 70(9), 1-70. 12.Research participants believed that the Asch conformity test involved a study ofA)altruism.B)visual perception.C)learning.D)aggression. 13.Solomon Asch reported that individuals conformed to a group's judgment of the lengthsof lines 14.Researchers find that conformity to the group is more likely when all of the followingoccur EXCEPT  15.Alex thinks smoking is addictive but other players on his hockey team insist that it's not.Alex is likely to conform to their opinion if 16.Professor Wang is a member of the faculty committee on academic standards. Othercommittee members want to begin accepting students with below-average grades.Professor Wang personally disagrees, but he will probably vote in favor of their plan ifA)the other committee members are all in favor of the plan.B)he states his personal opinion early in the committee's discussion.C)the committee votes by private ballot.D)he has a high level of self-esteem. 17.Individuals are likely to conform to the responses of other group members if they________ already publically committed themselves to their own personal response andif they know that others in the group ________ observe their own personal response. D)have not; will not18.Social norms are best described as 19.Frank avoids talking with food in his mouth because he knows others think it is sociallyinappropriate. This best illustrates the impact of What did Asch's conformity experiment show?The experiments revealed the degree to which a person's own opinions are influenced by those of a group. Asch found that people were willing to ignore reality and give an incorrect answer in order to conform to the rest of the group.
What did Solomon Asch measure in his study of conformity?Key Points. The Asch conformity experiments consisted of a group “vision test”, where study participants were found to be more likely to conform to obviously wrong answers if first given by other “participants”, who were actually working for the experimenter.
Which of the following is demonstrated by the Asch experiment?1 Answer. Simply they were a series of studies that demonstrated the power of conformity in groups. (Asch) for Milgram it was Obedience.
Why was Asch's study unethical?An ethical issue with Asch's study is that he did not obtain informed consent from the participants before the experiment so participants did not what would be asked of them in the experiment and were not told they had a choice to back out of the experiment.
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