Conformity...

Have you seen this experiment before? This a picture from an experiments conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s. This is how the experiment worked. Five people were invited to sit down and shown a series of cards like the one below.

The 1st person was then to call out which line matched the original line (line 1, 2 or 3). Everyone down the line (one at a time and in order) called out what they thought was the correct line. Each person in the group answered correctly every time. Then something changed. The 1st person answered incorrectly and so did the second and third, all stating the same wrong answer. The fourth person squints at the card and even though it is obviously wrong, gives the same wrong answer just as the three preceeding him. If you haven't guessed, the first three people and the last person are all in on the experiment. The experiment is really to test the fourth persons conformity level. What would you do at that point? What are you thinking when it's your turn? "Is there something wrong with my eyes? I know that's wrong but everyone else doesn't see that," or, "I don't want to look like an idiot, they must know something I don't know, so I'll say what they said."

Here are the results according to my book, "Of more than 100 subjects tested, 75 percent were swayed by the confederates on at least one of the 12 critical trials in the experiment. Some of the subjects conformed on every trial, others on only one or two. On average, subjects conformed on 37 percent of the critical trials. That is, on more than one-third of the trials on which the confederates gave a wrong answer, the subject also gave a wrong answer, usually the same wrong answer as the confederates had given."

Wow! 75%! I have a feeling that I would have gone along with the crowd even though I knew it was incorrect.

Here's the most interesting part: "When Asch (1956) changed his procedure so that a single confederate gave a different answer from the others, the amount of conformity on the line-judging task dropped dramatically—to about one-fourth of that in the unanimous condition. This effect occurred regardless of how many other confederates there were (from 2 to 14) and regardless of whether the dissenter gave the right answer or a different wrong answer from the others. Any response that differed from the majority encouraged the real subject to resist the majority's influence and to give the correct answer."

From this experiment I learned that #1: when going into an experiment, do what you want because you are probably the thing being tested and #2: stand up for what you know is right! If everyone is going along with something wrong and you speak out, you may give license to someone else to stand up and help them avoid making a mistake.