Conformity

President John F. Kennedy and several of his key advisers met in March 1961 to discuss a Central Intelligence Agency plan for the invasion of Cuba. The consensus of the group was to proceed with the invasion. At least one adviser, Arthur Schleshinger, had serious doubts about the wisdom of the plan, but he did not argue strongly for his position.

In a laboratory experiment, Solomon Asch brought together groups of college students and told them they would be participating in a study on visual perception. Their task was to match the length of a standard line against three comparison lines. This was easy to do, as only one of the comparison lines was the same length as the standard. Each group actually contained only one ...