The Asch Conformity Experiment
Links:
http://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html
In class we talked about how being in a network or social group affects individual decision making. We say that the person has the choice to make their own decisions and evaluate a situation alone or a person can abide by the groups majority decision and opinion even when it conflicts with their beliefs. The article I am linking to was written by Saul McLeod, a graduate teaching assistant at The University of Manchester, and discusses The Asch Conformity Experiment of 1953. In this experiment the subject is put in a room with other individuals who, unknown to him, have all previously decided on a certain, incorrect answer and is told to pick which line on the card to the right matches the length of the line on the left card. The subject always answers last after listening to the answers of the “fake” participants. The experiment lead to Asch uncovering that 32% of the subjects agreed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials. This leads us to see the flaw of the group mentality and of following the crowd as the crowd is not necessarily correct.
In class we talked about the information based effect and direct benefit effect. The information based effect is an individual agreeing with the crowd as the people in the crowd may know something the individual does not. The direct benefit effect means that an individual follows the crowd as being part of the crowd has value in of itself. Also the individual does not want to be the odd one out and perhaps risk ridicule. When interviewing participants after the tests Ache found that participants conformed for two main reasons: they want to fit in with the group and because they believe the group is better informed than they are – exactly fitting the two effects we talked about in class.
The article goes on to analyze other factors that increased or decreased conformity. Firstly, it was discovered that conformity by the individual tends to increase as the size of the group increases. This makes sense as the person would believe that each individual has some private information and not all of the individuals would choose one option rather than another if that option was inferior. The study also mentioned the status of individuals in the group as affecting conformity, the higher the status the greater the influence on the subject, creating high conformity. This harps back to a game in which $1 was split between individuals and the individual with the higher status usually received a higher cut of the money as they “seem” more powerful and so their opinion demands more respect.
In regard to factors that decreased conformity the study referenced that when the group is split, meaning another person has disagreed with the majority option, then the subject individual is more likely to trust their own opinion rather than go with the majority. Also when an individual is allowed to answer in private conformity decreases as group pressure is removed and there is no fear of rejection from the group.
Oliver Lake