Solomon Asch 1951 (Updated: 23/09/11)
AIMS: To determine whether a majority can influence a minority even when the situation
is unambiguous. Asch aimed to find out if the effects of majority influence that
had previously been found in situations in which the stimulus was ambiguous are so
great that they are still present when it is apparently obvious that the majority
have responded incorrectly.
PROCEDURE (METHOD): Asch set up a situation in which seven males all sat looking
at a display. In turn, they had to say out loud which one of the three lines A, B,
or C was the same length as a given stimulus line X [see below]. All but one of the
participants were confederates of the experimenter, and on some ‘critical’ trials
the confederates were instructed unanimously to givr the same wrong answer. The
one genuine participant was the last (or the last but one) to offer his/her opinion
on each trial. The performance of participants exposed to such group pressure was
compared to performance in a control condition in which there were no confederates.
FINDINGS (RESULTS): On the critical trials where the confederates gave the same wrong
answer, the genuine participants also gave the wrong answer on approximately 37%
of these trials. This should be compared against an error rate of only 0.7% in the
control condition. Many of the participants who gave wrong responses indicated that
they had yielded to majority influence because they didn’t want to stand out. Individuals
who gave only correct answers said either that they were confident in the accuracy
of their own judgement or focused on doing the task as directed (i.e., being accurate
and correct).
CONCLUSIONS: A majority can influence a minority even in an unambiguous situation
in which the correct answer is obvious (as was shown by the almost perfect performance
in the control condition). Asch showed convincingly that group pressures to conform
in terms of majority influence are much stronger than had been thought previously.
However, on about 2/3 of the crucial trials, the genuine participant gave the correct
answer, so many people managed to resist majority influence.
CRITICISMS (EVALUATION):
- Asch’s results may be explained in terms of the fact that the study took place in
America in the 1950s, a time when conformity was high and “doing your own thing”
was less socially acceptable. However, Asch’s basic findings have been repeated several
times more recently in various cultures.
- The research raises important ethical issues. Asch’s participants didn’t provide
fully informed consent, because they were misled about key aspects of the experimental
procedures (e.g. presence of confederates). In addition, they were placed in a difficult
and embarrassing position.
- Asch’s situation was limited in that he only assessed conformity among strangers.
In fact, majority influence has been found to be even greater among friends than
among strangers (Williams & Sogon, 1984).
- Asch obtained some relevant evidence from questioning his participants, but he didn’t
really explain exactly why there was so much majority influence. He also didn’t explain
why there were individual differences in the tendency to submit to majority influence.
- Some commentators on Asch replications have found that many confederates (who are
not usually trained actors) struggle not to give the game away. Therefore, the results
are open to the criticism that the naive participant is displaying demand characteristics
- ie: that they realise the ruse and play along with rather than genuinely conform.
Kazuo
Mori & Miho Arai (2010), in Japan, got around this criticism by replicating Asch’s
study with groups of 4 genuine participants, each wearing glasses with
polarising filters. 3 in each group saw the same stimulus line through the filters
but the fourth saw a different line. The order of shouting out which of A, B and
C matched the stimulus line was the same as in Asch’s original. Mori & Arai found
a gender difference in that their female fourth participants conformed to the similar
levels to those of Asch’s original; however, the conformity rates of Mori & Arai’s
males were much lower.
Interestingly Mori & Arai acknowledged the lack of mundane realism in both their
own and Asch’s original studies.