Solomon Asch

Social Psychology’s Solomon Asch

Solomon Asch was a renowned Polish-American psychologist born in 1907. While credited for his contributions to the field of social psychology, he was also a firm believer in Gestalt psychology. Two core beliefs of Gestalt psychology are that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and that people are influenced by their surroundings, meaning that the environment needs to be considered a social influence. It is these beliefs that, despite Asch's prominence as a social psychologist, remained a cornerstone of all of his research.

Like many people and students, Solomon Asch changed his mind about what he wanted to do with his life. He began his doctoral studies pursuing an anthropology degree. He eventually switched to psychology, earning his Ph.D. in 1932. While working on his Ph.D. at Columbia University, Asch was mentored by Max Wertheimer, a notable Gestalt psychologist, who influenced Asch's psychological beliefs.

Solomon Asch’s Theory

If you have any prior knowledge about Solomon Asch, you'll probably know that Asch's main subject of research is the theory of conformity.

We often think conformity happens in our daily lives but could never happen to us since we stick to our morals, opinions, and actions. However, as Asch's experiment shows, we are all more susceptible to conformity and conforming to a group than we may think.

Solomon Asch’s Conformity Experiment

In Asch's experiment, he studied conformity through a simple test – do the lines match each other? He had subjects in a room with people who the subjects thought were other participants in the experiment. It turns out they were confederates. (Think of confederates as actors. The confederates were told before the experiment started how to answer the questions, but the actual subject had no idea.) In each room were one subject and around seven confederates. The people in the room were shown one line and asked which of the other three lines that first line matched.

An example of Asch's lines for his experiment. wikimedia commons.

Asch ran multiple trials for each subject. The first couple of trials consisted of the confederates all giving the correct answer for the matching lines. However, randomly all the confederates would give the same wrong answer. The subject was the last person in the room to answer – would they succumb to the pressures of conforming to the group and give the answer they knew was wrong, or would they say the correct, obvious answer?

Asch found that only 23% of all his participants refused the group pressures and did not conform during all the trials. Most participants conformed during some trials, showing that group pressure strongly influences people, even when the group is strangers!

Despite these results showing that conformity does happen, there's a catch! Asch conducted additional trials where all the confederates except one person said the wrong answer. He wondered if the presence of one lone dissenter would affect the subjects' conformity levels. The results of these trials showed that the dissenter did have a significant impact on conformity. Conformity by the subject significantly and drastically dropped, with only one person disagreeing with the group (who was answering incorrectly).

Importance of Solomon Asch’s Conformity Experiment

Solomon Asch's conformity experiment dates back to 1951. Since it was conducted over 70 years ago, it has been one of the pioneering experiments about conformity—researchers built upon the findings published in Asch's study for years after this experiment.

Asch's study showed just how intense the pressures of conformity could be. Even though the participants were in a room with perfect strangers – people they've never met before and will never see again – they still conformed, even when they knew the correct answer! The results would not have been as pivotal if the length of the lines were not as clear-cut as they were. This shows that other people's responses in the room, over anything else, caused the participant to answer incorrectly.

How many of these people conformed in actions or clothing? pixabay.com.

Solomon Asch’s Contributions to Psychology

As stated above, Asch's conformity experiment was crucial in understanding conformity's impact on our daily lives. This research served as a basis for countless other studies focusing on the effect of conformity in social settings. Although the conformity experiment was Solomon Asch's most famous study, he still researched other principles of psychology.

Another influential (albeit not as famous) experiment conducted by Asch was about impression formation.

Asch's experiment involved participants reading descriptions of people. There were two statements depending on the participants' group; the only difference was that one person was described as "warm", and one was described as "cold." Asch found that the changing of one word does make a difference in the impression (the participants summarized the person in the "warm" description more positively than the person in the "cold" description), but most often when the word is a key descriptor of the person.

Overall, Solomon Asch's contributions to psychology still exist today. He was a pioneer in social psychology and was the main contributor to Gestalt psychology in his day. His conformity experiments have provided the foundation for research and understanding of social and group influence.