The Asch Conformity Experiment

Let us say his name was John Smith, and he lived in a generic house, in a generic city, and went to a generic school. Little John goes into class and sees that all of his friends have devised a plan to prank the teacher. John knows that they shouldn’t, but he goes along with it. They place the pale of glue on the door frame and wait for the teacher to come back from her talk with the principle. Then it happens. The door swings open and the glue plummets towards its victim, only, the victim isn’t Mrs. Green. It’s the principle, Mr. Marshal. John and his friends are all suspended. That night, John’s mother asks him why he did it, and he explains that it was their idea, and that he was just going along with them. His mother, exasperated, exclaims,

The experiment, dubbed the Asch Conformity Experiment, tested how, in a group scenario, people would react to a conflicting group mind. A group of people were given a set of lines and were asked to choose which line matched the standard. For the experiment, all but one of the subjects had met with the experimenter and were told to respond unanimously with the wrong answer. The single naïve subject went last and was able to see their group’s answers. By doing this, Asch pitted the single subject against its entire group (Friend 4-5). This experiment seems extremely simple, so, to the naïve subject, if everyone had said one while she thought two, then she must be wrong. I would probably fall into the group mind mentality and chose one. I would also have suspected more would conform like me, but the actual results were

There are two main types of conformity: informational and normative. Informational refers to when you take in other’s determinations in the event when you are unsure of the context. Informative is used when one is searching for accuracy in a situation. Normative conformity is when a person adjusts their views in order to blend in with the majority. The use for normative conforming is purely based on social order. Although a normative conformer may not change their stance, they may change their behavior towards that stance (Si 1). For example, if you were new to a school and a class that you knew nothing about, you would most likely use informational conforming to get by. Although, if you were new to a school and wanted to get in with the “cool kids” then you would most likely be a normative conformer. Most people have probably gone through both types of conformity without even realizing it. Knowing these two types of conformity, we can conclude that both are useful in real-life scenarios, but why is it in our go-to arsenal for everyday