E-01 · Social Psychology
The answer is obvious. The room disagrees. A panel of previous participants answers before you, and they are confidently wrong.
Experimental design
Between-subjects (alone vs. group); Asch line-judgment paradigm
Conformity
Public agreement with group judgment despite private perceptual evidence
Normative influence
Yielding to fit in or avoid social disapproval
Informational influence
Treating others' responses as evidence about reality
Asch effect
Elevated error rate when a unanimous majority gives wrong answers on unambiguous trials (Asch, 1956).
Unanimity
All confederates agree; breaking unanimity with one dissent sharply reduces conformity.
Private acceptance vs. public compliance
Whether the individual believes the group (acceptance) or only acts as if they do (compliance).
Difficulty
StandardEstimated time
10 minutes
Paradigm
Asch conformity
First published
1951
When a unanimous group contradicts plain perceptual evidence, a large fraction of people go along, some doubting their eyes, others knowingly yielding. Social reality can override physical reality.
Solomon Asch (1951, 1956) seated participants with confederates who unanimously gave wrong answers on trivially easy line-length judgments. Across critical trials, 75% of participants conformed at least once and about a third of all critical responses were conforming errors, versus under 1% errors when judging alone. A single dissenting confederate cut conformity dramatically, one of the most practically important results in the literature.
Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs, 70(9), 1–70.