Asch experiment

n. 1. A set of experiments investigating conformity conducted under the direction of Solomon E. Asch (1907-1996). Typically subjects are seated in a group and asked to make an easyjudgment in perception such as which of two lines is longer, on which people almost never make errors. Unknown to the subject, the other persons in the group were all confederates with instructions to make intentional errors part of the time and so place the subject in the position of disagreeing with a group of other people or making false reports of his or her perceptions. Asch found that most participants at least sometimes reported perceptions conforming to the false reports of the confederates when all the confederates made the same intentional errors but almost no one made errors if a single confederate gave a correct response. A small minority of participants reported perceptions distorted in a direction opposite to the group’s reports, and a few subjects reported accurate perceptions unaffected by the group. In postexperimental interviews Asch and his colleagues found that among the participants who had conformed to the false group reports, some subjects said they actually believed their own false reports, some subjects said they went along with the group so as not to cause trouble or embarrassment in the group, and some participants said they doubted their own perceptions and believed the group must be right. Almost all participants reported feelings of stress when they disagreed with the group regardless of whether they conformed or not. 2. An experiment using an experimental setup like Asch’s in which participants are placed in a position of having to disagree with a group of others or make false reports about their perceptions.