The Asch Conformity Experiments
At Swarthmore College in 1951 Solomon Asch published the results of a series of experiments on the effects of group pressure. A subject is led into a room where a group of people are already waiting. The subject is told that the others are volunteers as well. In reality, they are actors. The group is shown a line on a card with three comparison lines alongside it. The task is to estimate which lines are of the same length. As arranged, the actors unanimously give wrong answers to some of the exercises. On the average, 37% of the subjects agree with the obviously incorrect answer.
