Asch's Conformity Experiment

Subjects were shown four lines, roughly like this, and asked to judge which of A,B,C are the same size as X. 

X ----

A ---------
B ----
C ------

The kicker is that subjects were seated in a group of fellow subjects – actually confederates of Asch – who each gave the answer C, until the real subject, seated next-to-last, was called to give their answer.

As you can guess, the ratio of people who answered C in conformity with the others was too damn high.

Some notes on interpreting this experiment.

  1. The subjects could have been optimizing for the social aspect of "not sticking out".
  2. Even if there was no social aspect, we can't clear-cut say that the subjects responded incorrectly. After all, they believed their fellow subjects were being honest, and they shouldn't put so much higher a confidence on their own ability to judge visual sizes, over others' ability to judge visual sizes. Others' judgments do constitute evidence, though it must have felt terribly confusing.
    • (If you find yourself in a similar position: the feeling of confusion is your hint to completely re-evaluate the circumstances. Think outside the box and you may realize that your fellow subjects' answers make perfect sense if they're not fellow subjects!)
    • Sans time to think, it may make sense to assign >50% probability to the majority vote. It's not the same as saying you actually visually assess C as longer, it's merely saying "well, B still looks right to me, but I have no reason to believe that my assessment is better than yours." It can be a honest attempt to give the correct answer.

To hash out how much the above factors were involved, scientists did replications, variations and meta-analyses. They found:

  1. The conformity effect increases strongly up to 3 confederates, but doesn't increase further up to 10-15 confederates (more was not tried).
    • If you were using the others' judgments as evidence, this is strictly irrational. The weight of 15 confederates' judgments should influence your judgment more than the weight of 3.
  2. Adding a single dissenter, sharply reduces conformity. No matter if the dissenter says A or B, the subject feels much more free to break with the consensus on C. This effect is present regardless of whether the others number 3 or 15.
    • If you were using the others' judgments as evidence, this is strictly irrational. When there are 15 confederates, it should take 5 dissenters for the same effect as when there's 1 dissenter among 3, yet it seems 1 is all that's needed regardless.
      • Here's a lever by which an individual – you – can influence masses of people. Simply be the first dissenter, freeing up others to also break consensus.

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Created (17 months ago)