Asch Effect

Fundamentals

While at Columbia University, Solomon E. Asch began to study social pressure after reading Edward Thorndike’s work on the law of effect regarding positive reinforcement. Deciding to test whether group pressure might have an effect on incorrect responses, Asch designed the experiment. The results of these studies have become known as the Asch effect.

Asch began conducting his experiments while teaching at Swarthmore College. The question he sought to answer was how do individuals conform to the opinions of a peer group? To answer the question, Asch designed his experiment to test a group of students who are gathered and seated in a room, where the “subject” is seated toward the back of the room. The entire group is shown two pictures. The first is a picture of a line, and the second is a picture of three different sized lines, only one of which is the same size as the line in the original picture.

After the pictures are shown to the group, the group is asked a series of questions about the pictures. The other participants have been instructed to answer the questions incorrectly by continuing to agree that one of the unequal lines in the second picture is actually the same size as the original line in the first picture. The experiment tests the single subject’s ability to voice his own opinion, regardless of the opinions expressed repeatedly by of those around him.

The subject hears incorrect answers from the other participants. On average, the subject disagrees the first time and responds with the correct answer. For the second trial, the subject usually disagrees again, even though the rest of the group remains committed to their wrong answer. At this point, the subject usually shows visible signs of discomfort. In spite of the subject’s own visual perception, a significant number of subjects agree with the crowd. The subjects who agree give several explanations why. The two reasons they give most often for going along with the group is either that they think that the majority has to be correct or that they believe that it is important to the experiment’s structure that their answers agree with the group’s answers. The responses of the subjects can take three forms. The subjects can always disagree with the group, the subject can always agree with the group, or the subject can switch between disagreement and agreement.

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