Solomon Asch conducted a famous conformity experiment in the 1950s where he had participants judge which of three lines was the same length as a target line. While most of the other participants were confederates who intentionally gave the wrong answer, about 1/3 of real participants conformed at least once by giving the incorrect answer to fit in with the majority. The experiment demonstrated the powerful influence of social pressure and conformity within groups.

2. Subject:
Qualitative Research Methods in Education
Topic:
Asch Conformity Experiment
Submitted by:
Saddam Haider (BEUF17M146)
Umair Mumtaz (BEUF17M151)

3. Asch Conformity Experiment
Introduction
 Solomon Eliot Asch (1907-1996) was a Polish-American
psychologist and pioneer in social psychology.
 He created pieces of work in impression formation, prestige
suggestion, conformity, and many other topics in social
psychology.
 Solomon Asch conducted an experiment to investigate the extent
to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a
person to conform.

4. Continue…..
 In 1951, he created and conducted a social psychology
experiment, where he asked a participant to give an answer, while
the rest of the group disagreed with them to see how much the
participant would give into group pressure.

5. What is Conformity
Conformity
 Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in
belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group.
 This change is in response to real (involving the physical
presence of others) or imagined (involving the pressure of social
norms / expectations) group pressure.
 Conformity can also be simply defined as “yielding to group
pressures”.

6. Purpose of Asch Conformity Experiment
 The purpose of the Asch experiments was to demonstrate the
power of conformity in groups. Experiments led by Solomon
Asch of Swarthmore College asked groups of students to
participate in a "vision test."
 In reality, all but one of the participants were confederates or
accomplices of the experimenter, and the study was really about
how the remaining students would react to the confederates'
behaviour.

7. Procedure
 He used a lab experiment with 50 male students from Swarthmore
College and told them that they were participating in a vision test.
Using a line judgment task, he put the participant with seven
other students who were part of the experiment. The seven
students agreed in advanced what their answer would be when
presented with the line task. The participant thought that they
were all participating in the experiment.

8. Continue…..
 The experimenter stood in the front of the room and held up a
display with one comparison line and the students were told to
choose the line (out of three) that was the same length. Each
person in the room would state their answer line (A, B, or C) out
loud. The real participant was sat at the end of the row and would
give their answer at last.

9. Continue…..
 The group was told to announce their answers to each question
out loud. The confederates always provided their answers before
the study participant, and always gave the same answer as each
other. They answered a few questions correctly but eventually
began providing incorrect responses.

10. Findings
 Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed
to the majority view. On average, about 1/3 of the participants
who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with
the clearly incorrect majority.
 Throughout 12 trials, about 3/4 of participants conformed at least
once and 1/4 of participants never conformed. In the control
group where there was no pressure from other students who were
part of the experiment, less than 1% of participants gave the
wrong answer.

11. Conclusion
 What Do the Results of the Asch Conformity Experiments Reveal?
At the conclusion of the experiments, participants were asked why
they had gone along with the rest of the group. In most cases, the
students stated that while they knew the rest of the group was wrong,
they did not want to risk facing ridicule.