Test of Visual Acuity Visual acuity can be tested by measuring your sensitivity to differences in line lengths I will show you a standard I will show you three (3) comparison lines Your job is to determine which comparison line is the same length as the standard line

Next group of participants please! Same experiment, just with a new group of participants The lines may be arranged somewhat differently this time Your job is still to determine which line matches the standard

Congratulations! You just participated in the Asch Experiment! If you were the last one to reply, did you ever provide an answer that was different from everyone else? Why or why not? How did you feel when everyone else provided an answer that you knew to be wrong?

The Asch Experiment Conducted by psychologist Solomon Asch in the 1950’s Research question was: “to what degree would social pressure from a majority group affect a person to conform?”

Procedure Lab experiment 50 male college students Told they were participating in a “vision test” 5-7 subjects in a group Only 1 is participating in the experiment—others are part of the experiment After several answers, the fake participants unanimously choose to wrong line Subject last to answer—does he/she follow the majority or trust his/her own perception? Control was that some participants answered alone

Results 37 of 50 subjects (75%) conformed to answer with the group at least once Participants committed errors about 70% of the time by following the group’s answers When answering alone, participant gave the wrong answer less than 1% of the time It only took a group size of 4 people who agreed about a wrong answer to make a subject conform

Results Asked participants, “why did you conform?” Did not want to seem “peculiar” or ridiculed (called normative influence) Thought the group was better informed than they were (called informational influence) A few actually believed the incorrect answer, even though it was obviously wrong!

Criticism Study used all male subjects/ all of the same age group Study lacks population validity Not certain the results can be generalized to other real-life examples of conformity Ethical issue of protecting participants from psychological stress It is a “child of its time”—1950’s was an era of conformity/”do your own thing” philosophy didn’t emerge until 1960’s

Extensions of the Research Further trials changed the procedure (independent variables) to determine which factors influence the level of conformity (dependent variable) Results—factors increasing conformity: Group size Difficulty of the task Status of the majority group

So what? Why is the Asch Experiment important? Helps Social Change Hurts Social Change If people are willing to commit change because it seems like the socially responsible thing to do, then pressure to conform is good Change can be slow and difficult to make if pressure to conform is bad