Group Experiment Assignment: Asch Conformity Experiments
Solomon Asch conducted an experiment on Swarthmore College students from the United States
took part in a vision test to see how much social pressure from a majority group could cause a
person to conform. Asch studied conformity using a lab experiment in which 50 male students
from Swarthmore College in the United States took part in a vision test. Asch used a line
judgment task to place an unsuspecting participant in a room with other confederates in different
numbers during different attempts. The confederates had agreed in advance on how they would
respond when presented with the line task. The genuine participant was unaware of this and was
led to believe that the other participating students were also genuine participants. This technique
came to be known as a classic experiment in social technology. He conducted 18 trials in total
and found out the confederates gave wrong answers during 12 of the trials. The purpose was to
measure the impact of group responses on the answers provided by the real participant. The
critics of this trial argued that this experiment failed to throw light on any substantial reason,
rather it was a direct result of the political and social conditions prevailing in the United States
during the 1950s. This kind of environment was a direct creation of a political viewpoint known
at the time as Mcarythisim. People used to be under pressure to conform to the majority view out
of fear of being castigated as holding leftist views. Many other researchers highlighted this
reason and ended up disagreeing with the results obtained by Solomon Asch.
Using a line judgment task Asch asked the group of participants including the real subject
questions about the comparison of different lines among themselves and with the reference line.
Asch determined the number of instances an individual's answer got influenced by the answers
provided by the other confederates. In Asch’s experiment, about 32% of the participants went
along with the incorrect answers provided by the majority in the group. In the next 12 trials, 75%
of the participants confirmed with the majority view at least once and 25% of the participants
never confirmed or got influenced by the majority responses. This experiment arrived at the
conclusion that people mainly confirm with others because of two reasons: many believe that
doing so would allow them to fit in with the group and also groups are likely better informed
than the individual.
My viewpoint contrasts with the findings of this experiment. I believe the technique and
methodology adopted by the experimenter is erroneous. My major concern is that this
experiment was conducted on a group of same age male students only which does not necessarily
reflect the behaviour and conduct of a group of people belonging to different segments of
society. This led to a biased subject group lacking population validity. These results may not
reflect the behavior of females and older groups of people. The other limitation of this test was
that it involved a task of line judgement which is not something people would get to face in their
everyday lives. As such they may not behave in the same way as concluded by this experiment.
Furthermore, I tend to agree with some critics that the results of this experiment are rather a
reflection of societal norms prevailing in the United States during the 1950s. Out of fear of being
labeled as leftwing sympathizers most of the time people used to feel forced to accept and agree
with the majority view. This phenomena seems to have greatly affected how people used to
think, behave and respond in any group setting. My suspicion is that the results of this
experiment were influenced by the prevailing social and cultural conditions at that time.
