Solomon Asch Group Conformity

469 Words2 Pages
What is group conformity or better yet, what is conformity? Conformity is the sense of going along with our peers. Solomon Asch did a classic experiment about how we are influenced about the choices we make because of our peers’ choices. Solomon Asch experiment was conducted by inviting one person to being a part of the experiment without the knowledge that he was the only one doing the experiment. The room he went in was for seven people, which five people were already there, and the participant takes the sixth one. Then a late person arrives to take the last chair. This could gave the effect that the participant wasn't the only one taking the experiment. Then Asch showed them two groups of cards, one with the single bar and the other with three bars with one of them bars as the match. He repeated this several times and the people responded to the first two correctly until the third one that called out the incorrect one. His results out of the fifty people tested were: 33 percent gave in to the group half the time, giving they know it was the wrong answer. Another 40 percent gave wrong answers, but not as often. 25 percent gave the right answers no matter how the group responded.…show more content…
The reason is that the people were following what the group thought was right and did not think about going against the group because they would be embarrassed if they were wrong. It was conformity; people don't want to go against the grain of what everybody thinks the answer is even if it is the wrong one. It is basically if you don’t want to be wrong in a group because you want to be accepted in it and not want to be judged by them if you are wrong. The conformity was the six people saying yes to the wrong answer and the participant either choosing the right answer or choosing the wrong answer because of the social pressure of being
Open Document