Solomon Asch Conformity Experiments

Gordon Allport, American Psychologist, defines social psychology as a discipline that uses the scientific method in an effort to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. In other words, social psychology tries to understand how a person 's behavior is swayed by the social situation in which that behavior takes place. Human beings naturally seek to feel a sense of belonging, a need to be an accepted member of a group. This fundamental need makes humans vulnerable to social pressures, provoking a change of behavior to go along with the group even if they are not in agreement with the group. While there are many subtopics in social psychology,

In the 1950’s, Solomon Asch, pioneer of Gestalt Psychology and Social Psychology, became famous due to his series of experiments known as Asch conformity experiments. These experiments showed the effects of social pressure on conformity. One of his classic social experiments demonstrated how people are affected by the thoughts and behaviors of other people. In this experiment, Asch gathered seven to nine male college students, all were confederates but one. A confederate is a person who works for a researcher and is aware of the experiment, but who acts as a participant; used to manipulate social situations as part of the research design. The confederates and participants were all asked to have a seat in the same room. The experimenter revealed two large white cards; one with a single line (standard line) and one with three lines of different lengths (comparison lines). On the card with the three lines, one was the same size as the line on the other card, and the other two had varying differences. Each participant was asked to verbally state which of the three comparison lines was were the same as the standard line. During the first two experiments, everyone answered the same. On the third experiment, the confederates purposely gave the wrong answer. Each study had 18 experiments, 12 of

People do not run stop signs and drive the speed limit in order to prevent a ticket from a police officer. An individual may never consider robbing a bank or commit murder due to the fear having to serve time in jail. In addition to fear of consequence, people obey authority because of social norms. A person does not want to be looked down upon by their community. Just like conformity, people want to be accepted and straying from social norms will most likely result in being rejected by