Solomon Asch

8 Key excerpts on "Solomon Asch"

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  eBook - ePub

  Social Influences

  • Kevin Wren(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Normative influences, on the other hand, occur because as humans we have a need for social acceptance and approval. We often go along with the group because we dislike disapproval, we want to achieve a specific goal and being accepted is thought to be necessary to achieve it or we simply just enjoy cultivating approval in others. The following study is an example of this.

  Solomon Asch and normative social influences

  Study

  Another psychologist called Solomon Asch (1951, 1952, 1956) conducted a series of experiments that were much more tightly controlled than those of Sherif. (See article 2 in the key research summaries in chapter 6 . Read this now.) His procedure became the standard for most replications by others investigating variables in conformity such as gender and culture, as we shall see later.

  Evaluation

  The summaries of Asch’s results are misleading though. A closer examination of all of Asch’s results shows that despite an overall yield to group pressure, i.e. normative influence, there are many individual differences. Some participants did not conform, conformity was not consistent in all participants, and the range of responses was wide.

  These variations are important since they point to the possibility that Asch may have been testing a number of aspects of conformity or a much more complex situation than was first thought, as we will discuss below.

  Asch’s interviews with his participants after the experiments showed that many of them were clearly anxious. This stemmed partly from their desire to be in harmony with the rest of the group (the confederates of Asch), which meant they had to deny the evidence of their own eyes. They also thought it could be damaging to be a dissenter. Asch reports that many of the non-yielders ‘longed’ to agree with the majority. One of Asch’s strongest non-yielders remarked: ‘It is more pleasant if one is in agreement.’ Another described his feelings as: ‘I felt disturbed, puzzled, separated like an outcast from the rest. Every time I disagreed I was beginning to wonder if I wasn’t beginning to look funny.’ Like Milgram, this aspect has ethical implications. Was Asch ‘right’ to misinform his participants and subject them to such feelings?

  In Asch’s experiments normative influences were at work. The participants were responding to the demands of social identity

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  Psychoanalysis, Classic Social Psychology and Moral Living

  Let the Conversation Begin

  • Paul Marcus(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Seder (a ritual service and ceremonial dinner for the first night in Israel or first two nights of Passover in the diaspora). He saw his grandmother pour an extra glass of wine in a ceremonial cup and asked whom it was for. “For the prophet Elijah” (who heralds the messiah), an uncle told him. “Will he really take a sip?” the little boy asked. “Oh, yes—you just watch when the time comes,” the uncle replied. Excited with the sense of suggestion and expectation, Asch was convinced that he “saw the level of wine in the cup drop just a bit.” It was this experience that sensitized him to the power of social pressure and conformity (Stout, 1996, n.p.).

  Asch thus orchestrated an elegantly simple experiment to explore the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could influence a person to conform.1 In social psychology, conformity is defined as “the convergence of individual’s thoughts, feelings, or behavior toward a group norm” (Smith et al., 2015, p. 315). The original study, along with select follow-up studies, are summarized herein.

  Asch used fifty male students from Swarthmore College to participate in a “‘psychological experiment’ in visual judgment” (Asch, 1955, p. 32). Using a line judgment task, Asch situated a naïve subject (the “real” participant) in a room with seven confederates, whom had consented, prior to the line task presentation, to what their responses would be. The naïve subject was not aware of this and was made to believe that the seven confederates were real participants like they were. Each person in the room had to articulate aloud which comparison line on the large white cards (A, B or C) was most similar to the standard line. The correct answer was always entirely obvious. The naïve subject sat at the end of the row of chairs and provided his or her answer last. There were 18 trials altogether, and the confederates gave the incorrect answer on 12 trials (i.e., the “critical trials”). Asch wanted to discern if the naïve subject would conform to the view of the majority. He also had a control condition that excluded any naïve subjects, only real participants. The results were astonishing. About one-third of the naïve subjects acquiesced and conformed to the obviously incorrect majority on the critical trials. Moreover, during the critical trials, about three-quarters of naïve subjects conformed on at least one occasion and one-quarter never conformed. In the control group, less than 1% of the naïve subjects gave the incorrect answer (Asch, 1951; McLeod, 2008).

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  Psychology

  Modules for Active Learning

  • Dennis Coon, John Mitterer, Tanya Martini, , Dennis Coon, John Mitterer, Tanya Martini, (Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  The broadest norms, defined by society as a whole, establish “normal” or acceptable behavior in most situations. Com-paring hairstyles, habits of speech, dress, eating habits, and social customs in two or more cultures makes it clear that we all conform to social norms. In fact, a degree of uniformity is necessary if we are to interact comfortably. Imagine being totally unable to anticipate the actions of others. In stores, schools, and homes, this would be frustrating and disturb-ing. On the highways, it would be lethal. The Asch Experiment How strong are group pressures for conformity? One of the first experiments on conformity was staged by Solomon Asch (1907–1996). To fully appreciate it, imagine yourself as a participant. Assume that you are seated at a table with six other students. Your task is actually quite simple: You are shown three lines on a card, and you must select the line that matches a “standard” line ( ➤ Figure 71.1 ). As the testing begins, each person announces an answer for the first card. When your turn comes, you agree with the others. “This isn’t hard at all,” you say to yourself. For several more trials, your answers agree with those of the group. Then comes a shock. All six people announce that line 1 matches the standard, and you were about to say line 2 matches. Suddenly you feel alone and upset. You nervously look at the lines again. The room falls silent. Everyone seems to be staring at you. The experimenter awaits your answer. Do you yield to the group? In this study, the other “students” were all actors who gave the wrong answer on about a third of the trials to (a) (1) Standard Line Comparison Lines (3) (2) ➤ Figure 71.1 Stimuli used in Asch’s conformity experiments. Copyright 2022 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).

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  The Legacy of Solomon Asch

  Essays in Cognition and Social Psychology

  • Irvin Rock, Irvin Rock - DECEASED, Irvin Rock, Irvin Rock - DECEASED(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  on construal—influences long ago discussed and documented by Solomon Asch.

  My personal contact, and friendship, with Solomon Asch began in the fall of 1976 when he was beginning a 1-year stay as a fellow at the Center for Study in the Behavioral Sciences. I had just coauthored a paper (Ross, Bierbrauer, & Hoffman, 1976 ) that offered an “attributional analysis” of the classic Asch conformity paradigm, and he graciously invited me to the Center, which was located on a hilltop overlooking the Stanford campus, in order to discuss it. The focus of that initial meeting, as I recall, soon shifted from the narrow concerns of my paper to the current state of social psychology; and, before the afternoon was over, we agreed that we would meet regularly at the Center over the months ahead so that I could bring him up to date on any recent advances in our field—“advances,” he assured me with a twinkle in his eye, that he had “probably missed” during the years he had spent devoting himself anew to problems in perception.

  Needless to say, I learned a great deal more than I taught during our year-long tutorial. My senior colleague remained unconvinced that the “advances” I heralded—in particular, the fruits of a decade of solid research in attribution theory, and some very recent attempts to pursue more general inferential and judgmental shortcomings—either were particularly new or particularly promising. Meanwhile, I gained a new respect for Asch and for intellectual traditions that my own work, and that of other young social psychologists of my cohort, had drawn upon so heavily without our acknowledgment. This respect was further enhanced when I finally sat down and read Asch’s seminal 1952 text—a work that I had occasionally cited but one which, except for it’s chapter dealing with group influences on judgments, I had never explored in any depth.

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  Psychology

  Selected Papers

  • Gina Rossi(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • IntechOpen

    (Publisher)

  For example, homosexuals often conform to the norms of the group they belong to but turn out to be non-conformist compared with the remaining society of heterosexuals. Reference to homosexuals enables us to remember how, next to the influence of the majority, precisely in the studies of Asch, there is also an influence of the minority (Moscovici, 1976). Assigning a central role to social conflict, the minority, as for example illustrated by the history of the homosexual movement, have shown that it is possible to induce a change in the majority. 3. Obedience If for the studies of Asch we can speak of a conformism in words the research conducted by Stanley Milgram (1974) on obedience describes instead how conformity comes to involve conduct. Obedience is a particular form of conformity: it manifests itself when the “majority” is not a quantitative dimension but qualitative. At the bottom of this there is a difference of status: the one who exercises a power superior to others operates a direct explicit pressure on them, who adapt to his will. 3.1 Immoral orders and dilemmas of conscience “We will pay you $4.00 for one hour of your time. People needed for a study of memory”. With this announcement published in a local newspaper participants were recruited to the first of a series of experiments which signalled the story of social psychology (Milgram, 1974). Those who had responded to the announcement were invited to a laboratory to carry out actions which became more and more in contrast with their moral conscience. What interested the experimenters was to understand to what point the participants would obey Psychology – Selected Papers 280 to orders and when or how they would rebel. To make the prearranged situation credible a particular strategy was used: staging an experiment which had as its fictitious objective the study of processes of memory and learning; two participants were assigned the roles of teacher and learner.

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  Introduction to Sociology

  • Frank van Tubergen(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  why they conformed to the majority group and gave wrong estimates (Asch, 1956, 1961). Roughly speaking, the participants gave two kinds of answers. One group of subjects answered that they thought they must have misperceived the length of the line in some way, and hence followed the group opinion. Therefore they believed the group was right and their own judgment was wrong. The other group of subjects, however, believed they had it right personally, hence they did not agree with the group. Nevertheless, they conformed to the group judgment—so they adjusted their behavior—because they feared social disapproval when they stated their own opinions publicly.

  In a follow-up study to the work of Asch, Deutsch and Gerard argued that these two kinds of responses by the subjects of the Asch experiment reflect two mechanisms which can explain positive social influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955). First, there is what they call informational social influence , which they defined as “influence to accept information obtained from another as evidence about reality”. Second, there is normative social influence , which is “influence to conform to the positive expectations of another”. This kind of influence is based on the desire to receive social approval from peers, and to avoid social sanctions and punishment from the group when not conforming to the social norms. Thus, in the Asch experiment, subjects who believed they were right and others were wrong might have decided to conform to the beliefs of others and thereby avoid possible negative sanctions of the others in the classroom. In this case, beliefs about reality—factual statements—are normative, i.e., statements in the form of “X is true” are not neutral but normative and not agreeing with them can have social consequences. Sociologists have developed the social control theory around this idea and applied it to numerous social phenomena. In Chapter 6

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  21st Century Psychology: A Reference Handbook

  • Stephen F. Davis, William Buskist, Stephen F. Davis, William F. Buskist(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  So, why did opinions shift toward a group consensus in these studies? One answer lies in our desire to be correct. When a situation is ambiguous, we look to the behaviors of others as guides toward the best course of action. These behaviors are referred to as descriptive norms, norms that define what behaviors are typically performed (Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990). What if we already know what behavior is correct, but this belief is contradicted by the descriptive norms of the group? Will we still conform to the group, or resist defi-antly, comforted by the knowledge that we are correct? In a scenario reminiscent of Sherif’s, Solomon Asch (1956) asked participants to report publicly their judg-ments in the presence of others, but this study incorporated some key differences. First, the judgments were no longer ambiguous. Participants in this study were shown a single standard line and three comparison lines. Their task was to answer which of the three comparison lines was the same length as the standard line. The answer was so obvious that when answering privately, 95 percent of the participants provided the correct answer on all 12 of the task’s trials. When responses were made publicly in the presence of a group, the situation became more complicated. This group was not composed of naïve participants, as in Sherif’s auto-kinetic effect studies, but, rather, a group of actors posing as participants. Furthermore, the lone “real” participant in the study was positioned such that five actors called out their answers before it was the participant’s turn to respond. At first, all of the actors answered correctly, and the participants did as well, but on the following trial, the first actor picked a line that was obviously incorrect. More baf-fling to the participant, the next four actors each followed suit, confidently providing the same incorrect response.

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  The Determinants of Free Will

  A Psychological Analysis of Responsible, Adjustive Behavior

  • James A. Easterbrook, David T. Lykken(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY IN A SOCIAL CONTEXT This page intentionally left blank Obedience The men whose economic activities were changed by McClelland's achieve-ment training program had evidently been used to wielding power. Moreover their achievement fantasies revealed detailed knowledge, or analytic thought, about how successes were to be attained. Their heroes were represented as competent and as engaging in original, rather than compliant, activities. The contrasting group, whose economic activities did not subsequently change, had contrasting characteristics. They were accustomed to others having more power than themselves, and their fantasy characters tended to act conforming and com-pliant. Similar interpretive stories have been reported to be produced by men with generalized expectancies of external control. It appears, accordingly, that tendencies to compliant thinking and action inhibit the freedom of will that initiative and enterprise demonstrate. It is the object of this chapter to describe some evidence and theory on these tendencies. APPEARANCES AS CRITERIA FOR ACTION An experimental test of two types of conformity was introduced to psychology by Solomon Asch (1956). A number of people sitting together are requested to take turns making vocal reports or judgments about visible figures—for instance, to say which in a set of three lines on a wall display is the same length as a target line. The discriminations are easy; virtually no one makes a mistake when tested alone. For several trials every individual judgment is correct. Then, on a test trial, other testées who are confederates of the experimenter each in turn give the same incorrect answer, and the real testée, coming last, is faced with a quandary. What does he do? 97 98 Obedience In fact, about one out of every three testées will go along with a group of three or more who are in unanimous agreement, although the exact ratio depends on the shapes of the figures and other factors.

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