Asch (1955)

Aim: To investigate whether people would conform to a majority in an unambiguous situation where the correct answer was obvious.

Method: Asch recruited 123 male American students from Swarthmore College. The participants were told they were taking part in a vision test to hide the true aim of the study.

Each naïve participant was placed in a group with six to eight confederates and was usually seated second from last, so they heard most of the other responses before giving their own answer.

Participants completed a line judgement task. They had to say aloud which of three lines, A, B or C, matched a target line in length. There were 18 trials in total, and on 12 critical trials, the confederates all gave the same wrong answer. The researchers recorded whether the naïve participant conformed to the incorrect majority view.

Results: Asch found that:

• participants conformed on 32% of the critical trials

• 75% of participants conformed at least once

• 25% of participants never conformed

• 5% of participants conformed on every critical trial

Conclusion: Asch concluded that people do conform to a majority view, even when the answer is obvious, and the group is clearly wrong. Post-experiment interviews suggested that many participants conformed to avoid rejection and fit in with the group, rather than because they believed the group was correct. This suggests their behaviour was due to normative social influence, meaning they changed their public behaviour but not their private beliefs.