The ASCH EXPERIMENT

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It happens, at least once in life, the fact of being in the situation of agreeing with the rest of the group, although in reality we are not. This process has been called conformity or majority influence, and it refers to the way in which the small group in which we are inserted influences our personal way of seeing reality. Therefore, we are more concerned with adapting to the judgment of others than with expressing our opinion.

In the experiment carried out by Asch in 1956, even a banal opinion, without any consequence positive or negative for the subject, was strongly influenced by the wrong opinion of the most. In this Psychology-Online article, we will discover together Asch's experiment, thus delving into majority influence and conformity.

Index

1. What is the Asch experiment
2. Objectives of the Asch experiment
3. Conclusions of the Asch experiment
4. Where the Asch experiment can be applied

What is Asch's experiment? Let's see what the

1. The experimental protocol foresaw 8 subjects, of which 7 collaborators of the researcher met in a laboratory, without the knowledge of the eighth or experimental subject, so it was presented as a normal exercise of discrimination visual.
2. The experimenter presented them with tokens with three lines of different lengths in decreasing order, while another line was drawn on another card, equal in length to the first line of the first file.
3. The subjects were then asked, starting with accomplices, what was the corresponding line on the two cards. After a couple of normal repetitions, in the third series of questions the accomplices began to answer in a concordant and manifestly wrong way.

In this article, we tell you more about the social conformity: what is it, experiments, types and examples.

Asch experiment example

Imagine that you are in an Asch experiment with six other people. The experimenter explains that you will be participating in a study on perceptual judgment and asks you to tell him which of the three lines in the figure corresponds to the standard line. It is easy to see that line 2 is identical to the standard line and it is natural that the five people who go before you give that answer.

The comparison test below is also easy and you prepare for what seems like a simple test, but the third test leaves you stumped. Although the correct answer seems well defined, the first person gives a wrong answer. When the second person also gives the same answer, you look at the cards again.

The third person follows the first two. Your mouth is open, you start to sweat and you wonder what is happening. Are they or I blind? " The fourth and fifth person repeat what the others have said. Then the experimenter addresses you. What you are living is a epistemological dilemma: "What is the truth? What do my colleagues say or what my eyes see? "

In this example we can summarize Asch's experiment and how it analyzes majority influence and conformity.

The goal of Asch's experiment was to study the social conditions that induce the individual to resist or conform to group pressures when he expresses an opinion contrary to the evidence. The basic hypothesis of his experiment was that being a member of a group is a sufficient condition for modify the actions and, to some extent, also the judgments and visual perceptions of a person.

What is the Asch effect? The experiment focused on the possibility of influencing perceptions and in evaluations of objective data, without resorting to false information about reality or obvious objective distortions. Find out what it is social influence and its techniques.

Many students experienced this conflict by participating in Asch's experiments. Those who were subjected to the experiment on their own, in more than 99% of the tests gave correct answers. Asch wondered if the subjects would be willing to state what they would have otherwise denied if several participants had given the same wrong answer.

Although some people never complied, three-quarters did so at least once. In the end, 37% of the answers were correct, or they trusted the answers of others. Of course, this means that in 63% of the time the subjects were not satisfied.

Experiments show that most people tell the truth even when others do not, but, despite the independence displayed by many participants in the tests, Asch's sense of conformity was as clear as the correct responses to his questions.

The fact that young, intelligent and well-meaning people are willing to call black people white is a worrying situation. It makes us doubt our educational systems and the values ​​that guide our behavior (Asch, 1955)

The test results are surprising because they involve a undiscounted pressure to conform, since in Asch's experiment there were no prizes for team play and no punishments for individualism.

Asch's experiment clearly demonstrates the power of influence of the majority. Participants are influenced by the judgment of the majority, despite the fact that such judgment is contrary to their own perception.

Although the small sample used for the study and its homogeneity cannot make the results to which it has Once they are universal, Asch's experiment, repeated over time with different variables, has the merit of what paved the way for other very important social psychology studies.

In fact, Asch's procedure became standard in hundreds of later experiments. Also, in 1962, Solomon Asch joined the American television show "Candid Camera" to showhow fast a basic social normlike people standing in an elevator, could be reversed with the agreement of the group. Imagine all the behaviors you could achieve with deception through the power of peer pressure.

In this article, we invite you to discover other interesting psychological experiments.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Asch's experiment: majority influence and conformity, we recommend that you enter our category of Experimental psychology.

• Myers, D. G. (2009). Social psychology. Milan: McGraw-Hill.