experiments similar to asch experiment

The Asch Line Study (+3 Conformity Experiments)

Sheep. Complicit. Doormat. There are a lot of negative connotations associated with conformity, especially in the United States. Individualist societies push back on "going along with what everyone is doing." And yet, we conform more than we think. According to studies like the Asch Line Study, humans have a natural tendency to conform.

The Asch Line Study is one of the most well-known experiments in modern psychology, but it's not without its faults. Keep reading to learn about how the Asch Line Study worked, its criticisms, and similar experiments!

How Did the Asch Line Study Work?

In his famous “Line Experiment”, Asch showed his subjects a picture of a vertical line followed by three lines of different lengths, one of which was obviously the same length as the first one. He then asked subjects to identify which line was the same length as the first line.

Solomon Asch used 123 male college students as his subjects, and told them that his experiment was simply a ‘vision test’. For his control group, Asch just had his subjects go through his 18 questions on their own.

However, for his experimental group, he had his subjects answer each of the same 18 questions in a group of around a dozen people, where the first 11 people intentionally said obviously incorrect answers one after another, with the final respondee being the actual subject of the experiment.

Who was Solomon Asch?

Solomon E. Asch was a pioneer in social psychology. He was born in Poland in 1907 and moved to the United States in 1920. Asch received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1932 and went on to perform some famous psychological experiments about conformity in the 1950s.

One of these studies is known as the “Asch Line Experiment”, where he found evidence supporting the idea that humans will conform to and accept the ideas of others around them, even if those ideas are obviously false. This study is one of the most influential studies in social psychology .

Findings of Asch's Conformity Study

​ Asch found that his subjects indeed were more likely to give a false response after the other members of their group (the actors) gave false responses. As shown in this ‘Table 1’ from his experiment, during 18 trials, the ‘Majority Error’ column shows no error when the group response was the correct response, such as in Trial #1.

However, when the entire group intentionally gave a false answer (these situations are designated with an * under the “Group Response” column), the ‘Majority Error’ did exist and was slanted toward the opinion of the group.

For example, if the group answered with a line that was too long, such as in Trial #3, the ‘Majority Error’ column shows that the subjects generally estimated the line to be longer than it really was (denoted with a ‘+’), and vice-versa for when the group answered with a line that was too short, such as in Trial #4.

As for his control group, Asch found that people generally said the correct answer when they did not have a group of actors saying answers before them.

Interviewing the Participants

​ After the experiment, Asch revealed the true experiment to his subjects and interviewed them. Some subjects had become very agitated during the experiment, wondering why they kept disagreeing with the group. When the group pressed one particular subject on why he thought that he was correct and the entire group was wrong, he replied defiantly, exclaiming: “You're probably right, but you may be wrong!”

Other subjects admitted during the interview that they changed their answers after hearing others in their group reply differently. One was recorded saying, “If I’d been the first I probably would have responded differently.” Another subject admitted, “...at times I had the feeling: 'to heck with it, I'll go along with the rest.' "

Conclusions from the Asch Line Study

​ Asch found that his subjects often changed their answers when they heard the rest of the group unanimously giving a different response.

After the interviews, Asch concluded in his study that his subjects conformed to the opinions of the group for three different reasons:

Distortion of perception due to the stress of group pressure: This group of subjects always agreed with the group and said during the interview that they wholeheartedly believed that their obviously incorrect answers were correct. Asch concluded that the stress of group pressure had distorted their perception.

Distortion of judgment: This was the most common outcome, where subjects assumed that their individual answers were incorrect after seeing the rest of the group answer differently, so they changed their answer to align with the group.

Distortion of action: These subjects never doubted that they were correct and the group was wrong, but out of fear of being perceived as different, they suppressed their opinions and intentionally lied when it was their turn to give an answer.

Asch Line Study vs. Milgram Experiment

Both the Asch Line Study and the Milgram Experiment look at conformity, obedience, and the negative effects of going along with the majority opinion. Those negative effects are slightly awkward, like in the Asch Line Study, or dangerous, like in the Milgram Experiment. Both experiments were conducted in the Post-WWII world as a response to the conformity that was required for Nazi Germany to gain power. The premise of Asch's study was not nearly as dramatic. Milgram's was. 

To test conformity, Milgram and his researchers instructed participants to press a button. Participants believed that the buttons would shock another "participant" in a chair, who was really an actor. (No one was shocked.) The study continued as long as participants continued to shock the participant at increasingly dangerous levels. The participants knew that they could cause serious harm to the person in the chair. Yet, many obeyed.

Further Experiments and Variations

Solomon Asch didn't just conduct one experiment and move on. He replicated his experiment with new factors, including:

• Changing the size of the actor group
• Switching to a non-unanimous actor group
• Having a unanimous actor group, except for one actor who sticks to the correct response no matter what the group or subject says
• Instructing the one actor who gives the correct response come in late
• Having one actor decide to change their answer from the group’s answer to the subject’s answer

There are also many reproductions and replications of this study online. Not all of them come to the same conclusions! Read through the following texts to get a sense of how other psychologists approached this subject:

• Mori K, Arai M. No need to fake it: reproduction of the Asch experiment without confederates. Int J Psychol. 2010 Oct 1;45(5):390-7. doi: 10.1080/00207591003774485. PMID: 22044061.

Why Is The Asch Line Study Ethnocentric? And Other Criticisms

​ One big issue with the Asch line study is that the subjects were all white male college students between the ages of 17 and 25, with a mean age of 20. Since the experiment only shows results for this small and specific group of people, it alone cannot be applied to other groups such as women or older men.

Experimenter Bias in the Asch Line Study

Only choosing subjects from one demographic is a form of Experimenter Bias . Of course, researchers can use one demographic if they are specifically studying that demographic. But Asch was not just looking at young, white men. If he had expanded his research to include more participants, he may have produced different answers.

We assume Asch did not go about his study with the intention of being biased. That's the tricky thing about biases. They sneak up on us! Even the way that we share information about psychology research is the result of bias. Reporter bias is the tendency to highlight certain studies due to their results. The Asch Line Study produced fascinating results. Therefore, psychology professors, reporters, and students find it fascinating and continue to share this concept. They don't always share the full story, though.

Did you know that 95% of the participants actually defied the majority at least once during the experiment? Most textbooks don't report that. Nor did they report that the interviewees knew that they were right all along! Leaving out this key information is not Asch's fault. But it should give you, a psychology student, some pause. One thing that we should take away from this study is that we have a natural tendency to conform. This tendency also takes place when we draw conclusions from famous studies! Be critical as you learn about these famous studies and look to the source if possible.

Further Criticisms of the Asch Line Study

Does the Asch Line Study stand the test of time? Not exactly. If we look at what was happening in 1950s society, we can see why Asch got his results. Young white men in the early 1950s may have responded differently to this experiment than young white men would today. In the United States, which is where this experiment was performed, the mid-1950s was a historic turning point in terms of rejecting conformity. Youth were pushing toward a more free-thinking society. This experiment was performed right around the time that the movement was just starting to blossom, so the subjects had not grown up in the middle of this new anti-conformist movement. Had Asch performed this experiment a decade later with youth who more highly valued free-thinking, he may have come across very different results.

Another thing to note is that, at least in the United States, education has evolved with this movement of encouraging free-thinking. Teachers today tell students to question everything, and many schools reject ideas of conformity. This could once again mean that, if done again today, Asch would have found very different results with this experiment.

Another problem with this experiment is that, since subjects were not told it was a psychological experiment until after it was over, subjects may have gone through emotional and psychological pain during what they thought was just a simple ‘vision test’.

Finally, it’s good to remember that the ‘Asch Line Experiment’ is just that: an experiment where people looked at lines. This can be hard to apply to other situations because humans in group settings are rarely faced with questions that have one such obvious and clear answer, as was the case in this experiment.

Related posts:

• Solomon Asch (Psychologist Biography)
• 40+ Famous Psychologists (Images + Biographies)
• Stanley Milgram (Psychologist Biography)
• Experimenter Bias (Definition + Examples)
• The Monster Study (Summary, Results, and Ethical Issues)

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10 Psychological Experiments That Could Never Happen Today

Nowadays, the American Psychological Association has a Code of Conduct in place when it comes to ethics in psychological experiments. Experimenters must adhere to various rules pertaining to everything from confidentiality to consent to overall beneficence. Review boards are in place to enforce these ethics. But the standards were not always so strict, which is how some of the most famous studies in psychology came about. 

1. The Little Albert Experiment

At Johns Hopkins University in 1920, John B. Watson conducted a study of classical conditioning, a phenomenon that pairs a conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus until they produce the same result. This type of conditioning can create a response in a person or animal towards an object or sound that was previously neutral. Classical conditioning is commonly associated with Ivan Pavlov, who rang a bell every time he fed his dog until the mere sound of the bell caused his dog to salivate.

Watson tested classical conditioning on a 9-month-old baby he called Albert B. The young boy started the experiment loving animals, particularly a white rat. Watson started pairing the presence of the rat with the loud sound of a hammer hitting metal. Albert began to develop a fear of the white rat as well as most animals and furry objects. The experiment is considered particularly unethical today because Albert was never desensitized to the phobias that Watson produced in him. (The child died of an unrelated illness at age 6, so doctors were unable to determine if his phobias would have lasted into adulthood.)

2. Asch Conformity Experiments

Solomon Asch tested conformity at Swarthmore College in 1951 by putting a participant in a group of people whose task was to match line lengths. Each individual was expected to announce which of three lines was the closest in length to a reference line. But the participant was placed in a group of actors, who were all told to give the correct answer twice then switch to each saying the same incorrect answer. Asch wanted to see whether the participant would conform and start to give the wrong answer as well, knowing that he would otherwise be a single outlier.

Thirty-seven of the 50 participants agreed with the incorrect group despite physical evidence to the contrary. Asch used deception in his experiment without getting informed consent from his participants, so his study could not be replicated today.

3. The Bystander Effect

Some psychological experiments that were designed to test the bystander effect are considered unethical by today’s standards. In 1968, John Darley and Bibb Latané developed an interest in crime witnesses who did not take action. They were particularly intrigued by the murder of Kitty Genovese , a young woman whose murder was witnessed by many, but still not prevented.

The pair conducted a study at Columbia University in which they would give a participant a survey and leave him alone in a room to fill out the paper. Harmless smoke would start to seep into the room after a short amount of time. The study showed that the solo participant was much faster to report the smoke than participants who had the exact same experience, but were in a group.

The studies became progressively unethical by putting participants at risk of psychological harm. Darley and Latané played a recording of an actor pretending to have a seizure in the headphones of a person, who believed he or she was listening to an actual medical emergency that was taking place down the hall. Again, participants were much quicker to react when they thought they were the sole person who could hear the seizure.

4. The Milgram Experiment

Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram hoped to further understand how so many people came to participate in the cruel acts of the Holocaust. He theorized that people are generally inclined to obey authority figures, posing the question , “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” In 1961, he began to conduct experiments of obedience.

Participants were under the impression that they were part of a study of memory . Each trial had a pair divided into “teacher” and “learner,” but one person was an actor, so only one was a true participant. The drawing was rigged so that the participant always took the role of “teacher.” The two were moved into separate rooms and the “teacher” was given instructions. He or she pressed a button to shock the “learner” each time an incorrect answer was provided. These shocks would increase in voltage each time. Eventually, the actor would start to complain followed by more and more desperate screaming. Milgram learned that the majority of participants followed orders to continue delivering shocks despite the clear discomfort of the “learner.”

Had the shocks existed and been at the voltage they were labeled, the majority would have actually killed the “learner” in the next room. Having this fact revealed to the participant after the study concluded would be a clear example of psychological harm.

5. Harlow’s Monkey Experiments

In the 1950s, Harry Harlow of the University of Wisconsin tested infant dependency using rhesus monkeys in his experiments rather than human babies. The monkey was removed from its actual mother which was replaced with two “mothers,” one made of cloth and one made of wire. The cloth “mother” served no purpose other than its comforting feel whereas the wire “mother” fed the monkey through a bottle. The monkey spent the majority of his day next to the cloth “mother” and only around one hour a day next to the wire “mother,” despite the association between the wire model and food.

Harlow also used intimidation to prove that the monkey found the cloth “mother” to be superior. He would scare the infants and watch as the monkey ran towards the cloth model. Harlow also conducted experiments which isolated monkeys from other monkeys in order to show that those who did not learn to be part of the group at a young age were unable to assimilate and mate when they got older. Harlow’s experiments ceased in 1985 due to APA rules against the mistreatment of animals as well as humans . However, Department of Psychiatry Chair Ned H. Kalin, M.D. of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health has recently begun similar experiments that involve isolating infant monkeys and exposing them to frightening stimuli. He hopes to discover data on human anxiety, but is meeting with resistance from animal welfare organizations and the general public.

6. Learned Helplessness

The ethics of Martin Seligman’s experiments on learned helplessness would also be called into question today due to his mistreatment of animals. In 1965, Seligman and his team used dogs as subjects to test how one might perceive control. The group would place a dog on one side of a box that was divided in half by a low barrier. Then they would administer a shock, which was avoidable if the dog jumped over the barrier to the other half. Dogs quickly learned how to prevent themselves from being shocked.

Seligman’s group then harnessed a group of dogs and randomly administered shocks, which were completely unavoidable. The next day, these dogs were placed in the box with the barrier. Despite new circumstances that would have allowed them to escape the painful shocks, these dogs did not even try to jump over the barrier; they only cried and did not jump at all, demonstrating learned helplessness.

7. Robbers Cave Experiment

Muzafer Sherif conducted the Robbers Cave Experiment in the summer of 1954, testing group dynamics in the face of conflict. A group of preteen boys were brought to a summer camp, but they did not know that the counselors were actually psychological researchers. The boys were split into two groups, which were kept very separate. The groups only came into contact with each other when they were competing in sporting events or other activities.

The experimenters orchestrated increased tension between the two groups, particularly by keeping competitions close in points. Then, Sherif created problems, such as a water shortage, that would require both teams to unite and work together in order to achieve a goal. After a few of these, the groups became completely undivided and amicable.

Though the experiment seems simple and perhaps harmless, it would still be considered unethical today because Sherif used deception as the boys did not know they were participating in a psychological experiment. Sherif also did not have informed consent from participants.

8. The Monster Study

At the University of Iowa in 1939, Wendell Johnson and his team hoped to discover the cause of stuttering by attempting to turn orphans into stutterers. There were 22 young subjects, 12 of whom were non-stutterers. Half of the group experienced positive teaching whereas the other group dealt with negative reinforcement. The teachers continually told the latter group that they had stutters. No one in either group became stutterers at the end of the experiment, but those who received negative treatment did develop many of the self-esteem problems that stutterers often show. Perhaps Johnson’s interest in this phenomenon had to do with his own stutter as a child , but this study would never pass with a contemporary review board.

Johnson’s reputation as an unethical psychologist has not caused the University of Iowa to remove his name from its Speech and Hearing Clinic .

9. Blue Eyed versus Brown Eyed Students

Jane Elliott was not a psychologist, but she developed one of the most famously controversial exercises in 1968 by dividing students into a blue-eyed group and a brown-eyed group. Elliott was an elementary school teacher in Iowa, who was trying to give her students hands-on experience with discrimination the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, but this exercise still has significance to psychology today. The famous exercise even transformed Elliott’s career into one centered around diversity training.

After dividing the class into groups, Elliott would cite phony scientific research claiming that one group was superior to the other. Throughout the day, the group would be treated as such. Elliott learned that it only took a day for the “superior” group to turn crueler and the “inferior” group to become more insecure. The blue eyed and brown eyed groups then switched so that all students endured the same prejudices.

Elliott’s exercise (which she repeated in 1969 and 1970) received plenty of public backlash, which is probably why it would not be replicated in a psychological experiment or classroom today. The main ethical concerns would be with deception and consent, though some of the original participants still regard the experiment as life-changing .

10. The Stanford Prison Experiment

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University conducted his famous prison experiment, which aimed to examine group behavior and the importance of roles. Zimbardo and his team picked a group of 24 male college students who were considered “healthy,” both physically and psychologically. The men had signed up to participate in a “ psychological study of prison life ,” which would pay them $15 per day. Half were randomly assigned to be prisoners and the other half were assigned to be prison guards. The experiment played out in the basement of the Stanford psychology department where Zimbardo’s team had created a makeshift prison. The experimenters went to great lengths to create a realistic experience for the prisoners, including fake arrests at the participants’ homes.

The prisoners were given a fairly standard introduction to prison life, which included being deloused and assigned an embarrassing uniform. The guards were given vague instructions that they should never be violent with the prisoners, but needed to stay in control. The first day passed without incident, but the prisoners rebelled on the second day by barricading themselves in their cells and ignoring the guards. This behavior shocked the guards and presumably led to the psychological abuse that followed. The guards started separating “good” and “bad” prisoners, and doled out punishments including push ups, solitary confinement, and public humiliation to rebellious prisoners.

Zimbardo explained , “In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.” Two prisoners dropped out of the experiment; one eventually became a psychologist and a consultant for prisons . The experiment was originally supposed to last for two weeks, but it ended early when Zimbardo’s future wife, psychologist Christina Maslach, visited the experiment on the fifth day and told him , “I think it’s terrible what you’re doing to those boys.”

Despite the unethical experiment, Zimbardo is still a working psychologist today. He was even honored by the American Psychological Association with a Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Science of Psychology in 2012 .

Solomon Asch Conformity Line Experiment Study

Saul McLeod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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Solomon Asch experimented with investigating the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform .

He believed the main problem with Sherif’s (1935) conformity experiment was that there was no correct answer to the ambiguous autokinetic experiment.  How could we be sure that a person conformed when there was no correct answer?

Asch (1951) devised what is now regarded as a classic experiment in social psychology, whereby there was an obvious answer to a line judgment task.

If the participant gave an incorrect answer, it would be clear that this was due to group pressure.

Experimental Procedure

Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, whereby 50 male students from Swarthmore College in the USA participated in a ‘vision test.’

Using a line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates/stooges. The confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the line task.

The real participant did not know this and was led to believe that the other seven confederates/stooges were also real participants like themselves.

Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was always obvious.  The real participant sat at the end of the row and gave his or her answer last.

At the start, all participants (including the confederates) gave the correct answers. However, after a few rounds, the confederates started to provide unanimously incorrect answers.

There were 18 trials in total, and the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 trials (called the critical trials).  Asch was interested to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view.

Asch’s experiment also had a control condition where there were no confederates, only a “real participant.”

Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about one third (32%) of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials.

Over the 12 critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participants never conformed.

In the control group , with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer.

Why did the participants conform so readily?  When they were interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed or thought “peculiar.

A few of them said that they did believe the group’s answers were correct.

Apparently, people conform for two main reasons: because they want to fit in with the group ( normative influence ) and because they believe the group is better informed than they are ( informational influence ).

Critical Evaluation

One limitation of the study is that is used a biased sample. All the participants were male students who all belonged to the same age group. This means that the study lacks population validity and that the results cannot be generalized to females or older groups of people.

Another problem is that the experiment used an artificial task to measure conformity – judging line lengths. How often are we faced with making a judgment like the one Asch used, where the answer is plain to see?

This means that the study has low ecological validity and the results cannot be generalized to other real-life situations of conformity. Asch replied that he wanted to investigate a situation where the participants could be in no doubt what the correct answer was. In so doing he could explore the true limits of social influence.

Some critics thought the high levels of conformity found by Asch were a reflection of American, 1950’s culture and told us more about the historical and cultural climate of the USA in the 1950s than then they did about the phenomena of conformity.

In the 1950s America was very conservative, involved in an anti-communist witch-hunt (which became known as McCarthyism) against anyone who was thought to hold sympathetic left-wing views.

Perrin and Spencer

Conformity to American values was expected. Support for this comes from studies in the 1970s and 1980s that show lower conformity rates (e.g., Perrin & Spencer, 1980).

Perrin and Spencer (1980) suggested that the Asch effect was a “child of its time.” They carried out an exact replication of the original Asch experiment using engineering, mathematics, and chemistry students as subjects. They found that in only one out of 396 trials did an observer join the erroneous majority.

Perrin and Spencer argue that a cultural change has taken place in the value placed on conformity and obedience and in the position of students.

In America in the 1950s, students were unobtrusive members of society, whereas now, they occupy a free questioning role.

However, one problem in comparing this study with Asch is that very different types of participants are used. Perrin and Spencer used science and engineering students who might be expected to be more independent by training when it came to making perceptual judgments.

Finally, there are ethical issues : participants were not protected from psychological stress which may occur if they disagreed with the majority.

Evidence that participants in Asch-type situations are highly emotional was obtained by Back et al. (1963) who found that participants in the Asch situation had greatly increased levels of autonomic arousal.

This finding also suggests that they were in a conflict situation, finding it hard to decide whether to report what they saw or to conform to the opinion of others.

Asch also deceived the student volunteers claiming they were taking part in a “vision” test; the real purpose was to see how the “naive” participant would react to the behavior of the confederates. However, deception was necessary to produce valid results.

The clip below is not from the original experiment in 1951, but an acted version for television from the 1970s.

Factors Affecting Conformity

In further trials, Asch (1952, 1956) changed the procedure (i.e., independent variables) to investigate which situational factors influenced the level of conformity (dependent variable).

His results and conclusions are given below:

Asch (1956) found that group size influenced whether subjects conformed. The bigger the majority group (no of confederates), the more people conformed, but only up to a certain point.

With one other person (i.e., confederate) in the group conformity was 3%, with two others it increased to 13%, and with three or more it was 32% (or 1/3).

Optimum conformity effects (32%) were found with a majority of 3. Increasing the size of the majority beyond three did not increase the levels of conformity found. Brown and Byrne (1997) suggest that people might suspect collusion if the majority rises beyond three or four.

According to Hogg & Vaughan (1995), the most robust finding is that conformity reaches its full extent with 3-5 person majority, with additional members having little effect.

Lack of Group Unanimity / Presence of an Ally

The study also found that when any one individual differed from the majority, the power of conformity significantly decreased.

This showed that even a small dissent can reduce the power of a larger group, providing an important insight into how individuals can resist social pressure.

As conformity drops off with five members or more, it may be that it’s the unanimity of the group (the confederates all agree with each other) which is more important than the size of the group.

In another variation of the original experiment, Asch broke up the unanimity (total agreement) of the group by introducing a dissenting confederate.

Asch (1956) found that even the presence of just one confederate that goes against the majority choice can reduce conformity by as much as 80%.

For example, in the original experiment, 32% of participants conformed on the critical trials, whereas when one confederate gave the correct answer on all the critical trials conformity dropped to 5%.

This was supported in a study by Allen and Levine (1968). In their version of the experiment, they introduced a dissenting (disagreeing) confederate wearing thick-rimmed glasses – thus suggesting he was slightly visually impaired.

Even with this seemingly incompetent dissenter, conformity dropped from 97% to 64%. Clearly, the presence of an ally decreases conformity.

The absence of group unanimity lowers overall conformity as participants feel less need for social approval of the group (re: normative conformity).

Difficulty of Task

When the (comparison) lines (e.g., A, B, C) were made more similar in length it was harder to judge the correct answer and conformity increased.

When we are uncertain, it seems we look to others for confirmation. The more difficult the task, the greater the conformity.

Answer in Private

When participants were allowed to answer in private (so the rest of the group does not know their response), conformity decreased.

This is because there are fewer group pressures and normative influence is not as powerful, as there is no fear of rejection from the group.

Frequently Asked Questions

How has the asch conformity line experiment influenced our understanding of conformity.

The Asch conformity line experiment has shown that people are susceptible to conforming to group norms even when those norms are clearly incorrect. This experiment has significantly impacted our understanding of social influence and conformity, highlighting the powerful influence of group pressure on individual behavior.

It has helped researchers to understand the importance of social norms and group dynamics in shaping our beliefs and behaviors and has had a significant impact on the study of social psychology.

What are some real-world examples of conformity?

Examples of conformity in everyday life include following fashion trends, conforming to workplace norms, and adopting the beliefs and values of a particular social group. Other examples include conforming to peer pressure, following cultural traditions and customs, and conforming to societal expectations regarding gender roles and behavior.

Conformity can have both positive and negative effects on individuals and society, depending on the behavior’s context and consequences.

What are some of the negative effects of conformity?

Conformity can have negative effects on individuals and society. It can limit creativity and independent thinking, promote harmful social norms and practices, and prevent personal growth and self-expression.

Conforming to a group can also lead to “groupthink,” where the group prioritizes conformity over critical thinking and decision-making, which can result in poor choices.

Moreover, conformity can spread false information and harmful behavior within a group, as individuals may be afraid to challenge the group’s beliefs or actions.

How does conformity differ from obedience?

Conformity involves adjusting one’s behavior or beliefs to align with the norms of a group, even if those beliefs or behaviors are not consistent with one’s personal views. Obedience , on the other hand, involves following the orders or commands of an authority figure, often without question or critical thinking.

While conformity and obedience involve social influence, obedience is usually a response to an explicit request or demand from an authority figure, whereas conformity is a response to implicit social pressure from a group.

What is the Asch effect?

The Asch Effect is a term coined from the Asch Conformity Experiments conducted by Solomon Asch. It refers to the influence of a group majority on an individual’s judgment or behavior, such that the individual may conform to perceived group norms even when those norms are obviously incorrect or counter to the individual’s initial judgment.

This effect underscores the power of social pressure and the strong human tendency towards conformity in group settings.

What is Solomon Asch’s contribution to psychology?

Solomon Asch significantly contributed to psychology through his studies on social pressure and conformity.

His famous conformity experiments in the 1950s demonstrated how individuals often conform to the majority view, even when clearly incorrect.

His work has been fundamental to understanding social influence and group dynamics’ power in shaping individual behaviors and perceptions.

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Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological monographs: General and applied, 70(9) , 1-70.

Back, K. W., Bogdonoff, M. D., Shaw, D. M., & Klein, R. F. (1963). An interpretation of experimental conformity through physiological measures. Behavioral Science, 8(1) , 34.

Bond, R., & Smith, P. B. (1996). Culture and conformity : A meta-analysis of studies using Asch’s (1952b, 1956) line judgment task.  Psychological bulletin ,  119 (1), 111.

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The power of social influence: A replication and extension of the Asch experiment

Axel franzen, sebastian mader.

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Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

* E-mail: [email protected]

Received 2023 Mar 17; Accepted 2023 Oct 30; Collection date 2023.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

In this paper, we pursue four goals: First, we replicate the original Asch experiment with five confederates and one naïve subject in each group (N = 210). Second, in a randomized trial we incentivize the decisions in the line experiment and demonstrate that monetary incentives lower the error rate, but that social influence is still at work. Third, we confront subjects with different political statements and show that the power of social influence can be generalized to matters of political opinion. Finally, we investigate whether intelligence, self-esteem, the need for social approval, and the Big Five are related to the susceptibility to provide conforming answers. We find an error rate of 33% for the standard length-of-line experiment which replicates the original findings by Asch (1951, 1955, 1956). Furthermore, in the incentivized condition the error rate decreases to 25%. For political opinions we find a conformity rate of 38%. However, besides openness, none of the investigated personality traits are convincingly related to the susceptibility of group pressure.

1. Introduction

A core assumption in sociology is that what humans think and do does not only depend on their own attitudes and disposition, but also to a large extent on what others think and do. The power of social influence on individuals’ behavior was demonstrated already in the 1950s in a series of experiments by Solomon Asch [ 1 – 3 ]. Asch invited individuals into the lab and assigned them the task of judging the length of a line. He also placed 6 confederates into the lab who were assigned to give wrong answers publicly, so that the naïve subject could hear them before he provided his own answer. The results were very surprising: on average 35% of the real subjects followed the opinions of the confederates even if their answer was obviously wrong. The work of Asch has attracted a great amount of attention in the social sciences. Hence, a multitude of replications, extensions, and variations of the original studies have been conducted. However, many of these replications were done with student samples in the US, and fewer studies consist of samples from other countries. Furthermore, many replications were undertaken in the 40 years following the original experiment of Asch, but there are fewer replications thereafter. This raises two important questions: First, are the findings of Asch universal or do they predominantly apply to American students? And second, are the findings still valid today or has the influence of others diminished over time, for instance through increased education and democratization?

Moreover, many experiments in psychology are not incentivized by monetary rewards. This is also true for Asch’s original experiments and for most replications of it. However, in real life outside the lab, decisions are usually associated with consequences, either pleasant in the form of rewards, or unpleasant in the form of some kind of punishment. To make the study of decision-making more realistic, experiments in economics usually use monetary incentives [ 4 ]. To provide a conforming but wrong judgment in the original Asch experiment has no consequences, giving rise to the interesting question of whether the finding of Asch still holds when correct answers are rewarded. So far, the effect of incentives in the Asch decision situation has only been investigated rarely [ 5 – 7 ], with inconclusive evidence. Baron et al. [ 5 ] report that use of monetary incentives actually increased conformity when the task was difficult. A decreased conformity rate was only found in situations with easy tasks. Bhanot & Williamson [ 6 ] conducted two online experiments and found that incentivizing correct answers increases the number of conforming answers. Fujita and Mori [ 7 ] compared group reward and individual rewards in the Asch experiment and found that conformity vanished in the individual reward condition. Thus, the existing evidence on the role of incentives is inconclusive, calling for further investigations of the effect of incentives.

Of course, misjudging the length of lines when others do is not important in itself; the Asch experiment created so much attention because it elicits the suspicion that social influence is also present in other and more important social realms, for instance when it comes to political opinions. Early research by Crutchfield [ 8 ] suggests that the original findings on line judgment also transfer over to political opinions. We are only aware of one further study by Mallinson and Hatemi [ 9 ] that investigates the effect of social influence on opinion formation. However, the authors used a group discussion in the treatment condition, and hence diverged somewhat from the original Asch design. Furthermore, investigations of the effect of social conformity on political opinions are always idiosyncratic making further replications on the transferability from lines to a variety of political opinions important and interesting.

Moreover, behaving in a conforming way and misjudging tasks raises a number of interesting questions. About one third of Asch’s subjects was susceptible to social pressure on average. The rest solved the task correctly irrespective of the confederates’ opinion most of the time. How do those who are not influenced by the group differ from the ones that behave in a conformative manner? Crutchfield [ 8 ] investigated a number of personality traits such as competence, self-assertiveness, or leadership ability on the susceptibility to the pressure to conform to the groups’ judgment. However, many of the measurement instruments used by him or by others [ 10 , 11 ] investigating similar questions are suboptimal, and furthermore produced inconclusive results. Hence, it is worthwhile to further investigate the characteristics of those who conform to social pressure and of those who resist it. We are particularly interested in the Big Five, intelligence, self-esteem, and the need for social approval.

The remainder of the article proceeds in four sections. First, in section two, we present an elaborate literature review of the original Asch experiment, and its various replications. Section three describes how we conducted the replication of the Asch experiment and its variant by using political opinions. Furthermore, we describe how we implemented the incentives, and how we measure the various traits that are presumably related to behavior in the Asch experiment. Section four presents the results and section five concludes and discusses ideas for further research.

2. Literature review

In Asch’s [ 2 ] original experiment 6 to 8 confederates gathered in an experimental room and were instructed to give false answers in matching a line with the length of three reference lines. An additional uninstructed subject was invited into the experimental room and asked to provide his judgment after the next to last of the confederates. Asch [ 2 ] reports a mean error rate of 36.8% of the 123 real subjects in the critical trials in which the group provided the wrong answer. This result was replicated remarkably consistently. Bond and Smith [ 12 ] conducted a meta study including 44 strict replications, and report an average error rate of 25%. As with the study by Asch [ 2 ], the vast majority of these replications were conducted with male university students in the US. However, more recent studies from Japan [ 13 , 14 ], and Bosnia and Herzegovina [ 15 ] also confirm Asch’s findings. Takano and Sogon [ 14 ] found an error rate of 25% in male Japanese university students (n = 40) in groups with 6 to 9 confederates. Mori and Arai [ 13 ] used the fMORI technique in which participants wear polarized sunglasses allowing the perception of different lines from the same presentation. The method allows to abandon the use of confederates in the Asch judgment task. They replicated the conformity rate for Japanese female subjects (N = 16) but found no conformity for male subjects (N = 10). Usto et al. [ 15 ] found an error rate of 35% in 95 university students of both sexes from Bosnia and Herzegovina with five confederates per group. Other studies also show that subjects are influenced by groups, when the confederates provided their judgments anonymously or with respect to different judgment tasks such as judging the size of circles, completing rows of numbers, or judging the length of acoustic signals [ 8 , 12 , 16 – 21 ]. More recent studies conducted the Asch experiment also with children [ 22 – 25 ] suggesting that the conformity effect can also be found in preschool children. However, some studies also found age effects, such that younger children conformed to the groups majority judgment, but the effect decreases for adolescents [ 26 , 27 ]. To summarize, given the results of the literature, we expect to find a substantial conformity rate in the replication of the original Asch line experiment (H 1 ).

2.1 Monetary incentives

An important extension of the original Asch experiment is the introduction of incentives. In everyday life, decisions are usually associated with consequences. However, in the Asch experiment, as in many other experiments in psychology, decisions or behavior in the lab usually have no consequences, besides of standing out in the laboratory group. This raises questions of the external validity of non-incentivized experiments. Theoretically, it can be expected that correct judgments are less important if they are not incentivized. This could imply that the findings of the Asch experiment are partly methodological artifacts. So far there is only limited and inconclusive empirical evidence with respect to monetary incentives in the Asch experiment. Early studies analysed the role of the perceived societal or scientific importance of the task [ 20 ]. Later research incentivized correct answers in various conformity experiments. Andersson et al. [ 28 ] report that individual incentives decreased the effect of conformity on the prediction of stock prices. However, Bazazi et al. [ 29 ] report the opposite. They found that individualized incentives increase conformity in comparison to collective payoffs in an estimation task. In the study of Baron et al. [ 5 ] 90 participants solved two eyewitness identifications tasks (a line-up task and a task of describing male figures) in the presence of two unanimously incorrectly-answering confederates. Additionally, task importance (low versus high) and task difficulty (low versus high) were experimentally manipulated resulting in a 2 x 2 between subject design. Subjects in the high task importance condition received $20 if ranked in the top 12% of participants with regard to correct answers. Subjects in the low task importance condition received no monetary incentive for correct answers. The results of Baron et al. [ 5 ] show a conformity rate that closely replicates Asch’s [ 1 – 3 ] finding in the condition without monetary incentives. In the condition including a monetary incentive for correct answers, conformity rates drop by about half to an error rate of 15%. However, this result only emerges in the condition with low task difficulty. For the high task difficulty condition, the opposite effect of monetary incentives was observed. Thus, monetary incentives increased conformity when the task was difficult and decreased conformity in situations with easy tasks. However, one drawback of the study of Baron et al. [ 5 ] is a rather low sample size, which might explain the differential effects by experimental condition.

Fujita and Mori [ 7 ] analysed the effect of individual vs collective payoff in the Asch experiment. They found that the conformity effect disappears in the individually incentivized condition. However, also this study suffered from low sample sizes since there were only 10 subjects in the individualized minority incentive condition. Furthermore, Fujita and Mori [ 7 ] used the fMORI method and report that some subjects might have noticed the trick.

Bhanot and Williamson [ 6 ] conducted online experiments (using Amazon Mechanical Turk) in which 391 participants answered 60 multiple-choice trivia-knowledge questions while the most popular answer was displayed at each question. Correct answers were incentivized randomly with $0, $1, $2 or $3 each in a within-subject design, i.e. randomized over trials, not over subjects. Bhanot and Williamson [ 6 ] found that monetary incentives increase the proportion of answers that align with the majority. Hence, the studies using incentives yield inconclusive and contradicting results: Particularly, Baron et al. [ 5 ] found both an accuracy-increasing and accuracy-decreasing effect of monetary incentives depending on task difficulty. Bhanot and Williamson [ 6 ] found an increased conformity rate, and Fujita and Mori [ 7 ] found that the conformity bias disappears in the individually incentivized condition. Overall, we follow the economic notion that monetary incentives matter and expect that rewards for nonconformity decrease group pressure (H 2 ).

2.2 Political opinions

Another critical question is, whether matters of fact can be generalized to matters of attitude and opinion. Crutchfield [ 8 ] investigated experimentally the influence of social pressure on political opinions in an Asch-like situation. He found that agreement with the statement “Free speech being a privilege rather than a right, it is proper for a society to suspend free speech whenever it feels itself threatened” was almost 40 percentage points higher in the social pressure condition (58%, n = 50) than in the individual judgment condition (19%, n = 40). Furthermore, he observed a difference of 36%-points if the confederates answer “subversive activities” to the question "Which one of the following do you feel is the most important problem facing our country today? Economic recession, educational facilities, subversive activities, mental health or crime and corruption” as compared to an individual judgment condition (48% vs 12%). However, the results are based on a rather small number of cases and decisions were anonymous, unlike the original design of Asch.

To the best of our knowledge, there is only one further study that experimentally investigates the influence of social pressure on opinions regarding political issues in an Asch-like situation. In the study of Mallinson and Hatemi [ 9 ] participants (n = 58) were asked to give their opinion on a specific local political issue before and after a 30–45 minutes face-to-face group discussion (treatment condition). In the control condition subjects received written information that contradicts their initial opinion. They found that in the control condition only 8% changed their initial opinion when provided with further information, while in the treatment condition 38% of subjects changed their opinion. Yet, in this recent study the sample size is also rather small. To sum up, given the results of these two studies, we expect that groups exert influence also on political opinions (H 3 ).

2.3 Individual differences

Crutchfield [ 8 ] was also the first who investigated the relationship between personality traits and the susceptibility to the pressure of conformity. He found that low conformity rates were related to high levels of intellectual competence, ego strength, leadership ability, self-control, superiority feelings, adventurousness, self-assertiveness, self-respect, tolerance of ambiguity, and freedom from compulsion regarding rules. High levels of conformity were observed for subjects with authoritarian, anxious, distrustful, and conventional mindsets. However, no substantial correlation was found for neuroticism. Obviously, Crutchfield’s [ 8 ] study is limited by a rather low number of subjects (N = 50). Moreover, the measurement instruments used may be debatable from a contemporary point of view. We are aware of one more recent study with a sufficiently high number of study subjects and more rigid measurement instruments to test the influence of personality traits on conformity in Asch-like situations: Kosloff et al. [ 19 ] analysed the association of the Big Five personality traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness) with conformity in public ratings of the humorousness of unfunny cartoons in 102 female college students. Kosloff et al. [ 19 ] found that subjects with low neuroticism, high agreeableness, and high conscientiousness scores show high levels of conformity. Extraversion, and openness were not associated with conformity ratings. Beyond that, we are not aware of any more studies that investigate the influence of the Big Five personality traits in the original Asch situation. However, there is evidence that openness is linked to nonconformity. Eck and Gebauer [ 30 ] argue that “open people engage in independent thought and, thus, rely little on the conformity heuristic”.

Crutchfield [ 8 ] studied the effect of intellectual competence on conformity. He found that higher competence was associated with lower levels of conformity. However, intelligence was measured by the subjective ratings of the experimental staff. Iscoe, Williams, and Harvey [ 10 ] exposed high school students (7 to 15 years) to group pressure in an acoustic task (counting metronome ticks), and approximated intelligence by subjects’ school records. They found no correlation of school records with conformity. Uchida et al. [ 31 ] studied 12 to 14 year-old high school students and assessed scholastic achievements by their school performance. They report that high achievers conformed less to the majority than low achievers. Hence, results of the effect of intelligence on conformity are inconclusive so far and the existing studies use indirect measures (school grades) but do not measure intelligence directly.

The effect of self-esteem (or self-assertiveness, self-consciousness) on conformity was only investigated in a few studies so far. Kurosawa [ 11 ] found no effect on conformity when the decision of the minority subject was preceded by two confederates. In groups of four, confederates’ self-esteem had a negative effect on conformity. Similarly, Tainaka et al. [ 32 ] found in a sample of Japanese female students that those with low self-esteem conformed more often in a co-witness task.

In addition, the need for social approval may explain individual differences in conformity behavior. The urge to please others by adhering to social norms is expected to be positively related to conformity, simply because conformity is socially approved in many situations and because of a general tendency among humans toward acquiescence. Once more, Crutchfield [ 8 ] provided the first hints of a positive relationship between the need for social approval and conforming behavior in an anonymous Asch situation. However, the measurement instrument he used is debatable. Strickland and Crowne [ 33 ] confirmed Crutchfield’s [ 8 ] finding in a sample of 64 female students exposed to an Asch-like acoustic judgment task using the Crowne-Marlowe (CM) social desirability scale [ 34 , 35 ] to gauge the need for social approval. Again, we are not aware of any other more recent study on this aspect. Hence, we investigate the association of the need for social approval using the CM social desirability scale as well as a more recent and supposedly more appropriate instrument to capture the need for social approval [ 36 ]. Summarizing, we expect to find a positive association between social approval and conformity (H 4 ), and negative associations for intelligence (H 5 ) and self-esteem (H 6 ). With respect to the Big Five we follow Eck and Gebauer [ 30 ] and expect a negative relation between openness and conformity (H 7 ).

Finally, Crutchfield [ 8 ] also analysed the influence of gender on conformity in a sample of 40 female and 19 male college students (study two). He found that young women show higher conformity rates than young men. Yet, in a third study he found that female college alumnae (N = 50) show lower conformity rates than in study one. Hence, Crutchfield’s [ 8 ] findings for the gender effect are inconclusive. However, Bond and Smith [ 12 ] report in their meta-analysis higher conformity rates for females. The study by Griskevicius et al. [ 18 ] shows that gender-differences in conformity depend on the activation of behavioral motives. Men who were primed to attract a mate revealed more independent judgments than women primed to attract a mate, supposedly because of differing mating preferences in men and women. Therefore, we wonder, whether we can replicate the finding that females are more conformative than males in the Asch experiment.

3. Design and method

3.1 procedure and materials.

The experiment consisted of three parts. Part 1 was designed to replicate the original Asch experiment. For this purpose, we recruited 210 subjects on the campus of the University of Bern. Informed consent was obtained verbally before participants entered the experimental room. We randomized subjects into two groups. In group one subjects had to judge the length of lines, as in the original Asch experiment. For this purpose, we placed 5 confederates in addition to a naïve subject in a room. The confederates were asked to behave as naïve subjects and entered the room one after the other. The front row of the seats in the experimental room were numbered such that subjects sat next to each other. The naïve subject was always assigned to seat number 5, leaving the last seat to another confederate. First, we presented some instructions to the subjects: “Welcome to our study on decision-making behavior and opinions. This study consists of two parts: In the first part in this room, we ask you to solve a total of 10 short tasks. In the second part in the room next door, we ask you to complete a short questionnaire on the laptop. In total, this study takes about 40 minutes. As compensation for your participation, you will receive 20 Swiss francs in cash after completing the study.” We then presented a reference line to subjects next to three other lines that were numbered 1 through 3 on projected slides. Subjects were asked to judge the length of the reference line by naming the number of the line that corresponds to the reference line in length. We presented 10 such line tasks (see Fig A1 in the S1 Appendix ). In the first two trials as well as in trials number 4 and 8, confederates pointed out the correct lines. Four trials were easy tasks, since the difference between the reference line and two of the other lines was large. The other six trials were more difficult, since the differences were small. Subjects were asked to call out the number of the correct line always starting with subject 1 through 6.

After the line task in part 2 of the experiment subjects were confronted with 5 general questions on different political issues. The statements were selected because we believe they describe fundamental attitudes towards different political or social groups in a democracy. The five statements read (1) “Do you think that the Swiss Federal Government should be given more power?”, (2) “Do you think trade unions should be given more power in Switzerland?”, (3) “Do you think that the employers’ association in Switzerland should be given more power?”, (4) “Do you think that citizens should be given more liberties in Switzerland?”, and (5) “Do you think that companies in Switzerland should be given more freedom?”. Subjects were asked to answer all 5 questions with either yes or no. The confederates in this group were instructed to answer “yes” to the first question and “no” to the rest. We chose this sequence of “yes” and “no” to prevent that subjects discover the existence of confederates. Finally, part 3 of the experiment consisted of an online questionnaire which subjects were asked to complete. To conceal that some participants were confederates all 6 participants were accompanied to separate rooms where the online-questionnaire was installed on a laptop. The questionnaire was designed to measure a number of different personality traits. Particularly, we measured the Big Five using a 10-item scale (two items for each of the 5 traits) as suggested by Rammstedt et al. [ 37 ] (see Table A1 in the S1 Appendix for item wording); a 10-item scale measuring self-esteem as suggested by Rosenberg [ 38 ] (see Table A2 in the S1 Appendix ); a short version of the Hagen Matrices Test [ 39 ] to measure intelligence and the 10-item version of the Martin Larson Approval Motivation Scale (MLAM) [ 36 ].

In group 2 the experimental design and procedure was the same as in group 1 besides the fact that correct answers in the length of lines judgment task were incentivized. In addition to the 20 Swiss francs show-up fee, subjects received one Swiss franc for every correct answer in the line judgment task, and hence, could earn up to 30 Swiss francs in total. Since there are no correct answers to political opinions these were not incentivized. However, we randomized the confederates’ answers to political opinion questions independently of whether a subject was in the incentivized or non-incentivized group. In one version confederates answered “yes” to the first question and “no” to the four other questions. In the other version the sequence of the confederates’ response was “no” to the first question and “yes” in response to the other four. The experiment was conducted by three different research teams consisting of 7 student assistants each. In every group 5 students acted as confederates and 2 as research assistants, recruiting subjects, welcoming and instructing them in the laboratory room, and reading out loud the projected instructions.

A power analysis suggested that we need about 100 subjects per experimental condition to find statistically significant (α = 0.05) differences of 5 percentage points for a power of 0.8. Hence, we stopped recruiting subjects after reaching 210 participants. The experiment was conducted between March 16, 2021 and April 30, 2021. The authors had no access to any information that links individual identifiers to the data. Subjects were debriefed after the end of the study by email.

Overall, 210 subjects participated in the experiment (female = 61%, mean age = 22.6). 102 subjects were randomly assigned to the non-incentivized group and 108 into the group with incentives. Moreover, 113 subjects were assigned to the sequences of “yes” and four “no” of the political opinion task and 97 to the reversed sequence, suggesting that the randomization procedure worked well. The questionnaire also contained an attention check. The question reads “In the following we show you five answer categories. Please do not tick any of the answers”. Four subjects failed to comply and ticked an answer, suggesting that they did not pay proper attention to the question wording. These subjects were excluded from the analysis. Furthermore, we asked subjects at the end of the questionnaire what they think the experiment was about. Three subjects recognized that the experiment was the line task experiment of Asch or expressed the suspicion that some of the other group members were confederates. We also excluded these three subjects from the analysis. Moreover, one subject answered the question about their gender with “other” and was also excluded from the analysis. Hence, these exclusions result in 202 valid cases. However, the results presented do not depend on these eight excluded observations.

Fig 1 presents the results of the ten line length tasks for the non-incentivized (grey bars) and for the incentivized conditions (blue bars). As can be clearly seen, almost none of the naïve subjects gave an incorrect answer when the group provided the correct answer which was the case in decision situations 1, 2, 4 and 8. However, when the group provides the false answer a substantial number of naïve subjects provided this incorrect answer as well (decision situations 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10). The proportion of incorrect answers in the non-incentivized condition is relatively small in decision 3 (10%), but relatively high in decisions number 6 and 7 (44% and 47%). The average of incorrect answers is 33% in the non-incentivized group, which is a perfect replication of Asch’s (1955) original 36.8% result (two sample two-sided T-test, t(16) = 0.59, p = 0.57).

Fig 1. Asch line task: Correct answers by condition and trial.

Note: Percent of correct answers by experimental group and trial including 95% confidence intervals. The numbers on top of the bars denote the trial numbers. “correct” stands for uncritical trials, “false” for critical trials. “easy” denotes easy trials with big differences between the lines, and “hard” denotes more difficult trials with smaller differences between the lines. The numbers between the bars denote the difference in proportions between the groups in percentage points. One-sided T-tests: * = p < 0.05. N without incentive (no) = 99, n with incentive (yes) = 103.

When correct answers are incentivized, the proportion of incorrect answers decreases by on average 8%-points. The difference between the groups is statistically significant in 2 out of 6 critical trials (p < 0.05 for one-sided T-tests). The difference also becomes evident when we consider the number of incorrect answers in the 6 critical trials. When decisions were not incentivized subjects gave on average 1.97 incorrect answers. In the incentivized condition the average number dropped to 1.47, leading to a statistically significant difference of 0.5 incorrect answers (t(208) = 2.24, p = 0.03 for two-sided T-test).

Next, Fig 2 presents the results concerning the five political questions. When the group said “yes” to the question of whether the Swiss Federal Council (the government in Switzerland) should have more power, 27% of the naïve subjects did so as well. When the group said “no” only 3% of the subjects said “yes” resulting in a difference of 23.4%-points. When the group said that trade unions should have more power 72% of the subjects answered “yes” as compared to only 29% when the group said “no” resulting in a difference of 43%-points. Similarly, the question of whether the employers’ association should have more power is agreed to by 44% and 6% respectively, depending on the group agreeing or disagreeing. Moreover, 81% of the subjects agreed that citizens in Switzerland should be given more liberties when the group does so, and 33% agreed to this question when the group says “no”. Finally, 46% said that companies should be given more freedom when the group agreed but only 8% did so when the group denied this question. The average difference in the proportion of yes-answers is 38%-points and all 5 differences are statistically highly significant. This result corresponds astonishingly close to the result in the length of line experiment and suggests that the influence of group pressure can be generalized to the utterance of political opinions.

Fig 2. Political opinions and social influence.

Note: Percent of ‘yes’ answers to five general questions on political opinions in which all confederates answered uniformly ‘yes’ or ‘no’, by experimental group including 95% confidence intervals. The numbers on top of the bars stand for the difference in proportions between the respective groups in percentage points. Two-sided T-tests: *** = p < 0.001. n (sequence yes, no, no, no, no) = 109, n (sequence no, yes, yes, yes, yes) = 93.

One interesting question is whether the susceptibility to group pressure is linked to certain personality traits. To investigate this question, we count the number of wrong answers in the six critical trials of the length of line task. This variable is our dependent variable and runs from 0 when a subject always gave correct answers to 6 for subjects who gave only wrong answers. First, we wondered whether conformity is linked to the Big Five personality traits. We measured the Big Five using a short 10-item version as suggested by Rammstedt et al. [ 37 ] which measures each trait (openness, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism) with two questions (see Table A1 in the S1 Appendix ).

Second, we incorporate a 10-item measure of self-esteem, as suggested by Rosenberg [ 38 ], into the analysis (see Table A2 in the S1 Appendix ). Each item of the scale has four answer categories ranging from 1 = “disagree strongly”, 2 = “disagree”, 3 = “agree” to 4 = “agree strongly”. Subjects that score high on self-esteem are expected to have stronger confidence in their own perception and should be less influenced by the group’s opinion. Third, we measured individuals’ intelligence using a short version of the Hagen Matrices Test (HMT) [ 39 ]. The HMT consists of six 9-field matrices that show graphical symbols that follow a logical order. The last field is missing and the task of the subjects is to pick the correct symbol, out of eight, that fits and completes the pattern of the matrix. Hence, the HMT ranges from 0 if no answer is correct to 6 for subjects who provided six correct answers. The hypothesis is that subjects who score high on the HMT are less susceptible to the pressure of the group and also provide more correct answers in the line task.

Finally, conformity might be linked to the need for social approval. We measured the need for social approval with a 10-item version of the Martin Larson Approval Motivation Scale (MLAM) [ 36 ] (see Table A3 in the S1 Appendix ). Individuals that score highly on the MLAM display high need for social approval by others. Hence, we expect that subjects with higher values on the MLAM should also conform more often to the opinions of others in order to receive social approval. A summary of the descriptive information of the considered variables is depicted in Table A4 in the S1 Appendix . To investigate whether any of the measured personality traits are linked to the answering behavior in the line task we conducted multiple OLS regression analysis. The results of this analysis are depicted in the coefficient plots in Fig 3 (see also Table A5 in the S1 Appendix ).

Fig 3. Coefficient plot of individual characteristics on the number of conforming answers (OLS regression).

Note: N = 202. Unstandardized coefficients of multiple linear OLS regressions including robust 95% confidence intervals. Poisson and negative binomial models do not alter the results in any substantial way. Variables marked with an ‘*’ indicate statistically significant differences in the coefficients between models (2) and (3).

First, model 1 presents the effects on the number of conforming answers for the whole sample. In the incentivized condition subjects gave on average 0.43 fewer conforming answers as compared to the unincentivized condition. This effect mirrors the bivariate result already presented in Fig 1 and is statistically significant for the 5% level. In tendency, females show more conforming answers, but this effect is statistically only significant for the 10% level. Besides “openness” none of the personality traits contained in the Big Five show any statistically significant effects. This is also true for the other effects of intelligence, self-esteem, and the measure for social approval seeking. Models 2 and 3 show the results for men and women separately. The separate results suggest that women react somewhat more strongly to incentives than do men. However, a test for differences in coefficients suggests that the effects do not differ (χ 2 (1) = 1.11, p = 0.29). Intelligence seems to have greater importance for men, leading to 0.27 fewer conforming answers for every correct answer of the HMT. However, this effect does not differ statistically from the effect for females (χ 2 (1) = 1.35, p = 0.25). No difference in effects can be observed for self-esteem. However, in the female sample the need for social approval is positively linked to the number of conforming answers, which is not the case in the male sample (χ 2 (1) = 4.23, p = 0.04); but the effect of social approval in the female sample is relatively small.

We conducted a number of robustness checks with the presented analyses. Since our dependent variable is a count variable (number of conforming answers) the models can also be estimated using Poisson regressions or negative-binomial models. However, none of our presented results change in any substantial way using these alternatives. Furthermore, we excluded 24 more subjects who when asked at the end of the experiment about the goal of the study said that the experiment was about group pressure or conformity, although they did not explicitly mention Asch or the suspicion that other participants were confederates. But these additional exclusions also did not change the results substantially (see Table A6 in the S1 Appendix ). Finally, we also incorporated the 10-item version of the Marlowe-Crowne Scale [ 34 , 35 ] suggested by Clancy [ 40 , 41 ]. However, inclusion of the scale did not show any statistically significant effects or did change any of the other estimates.

5. Conclusion and discussion

In this study we first replicated the original experiment of Asch [ 1 – 3 ] with 5 confederates and ten line tasks. We find an average error rate of 33% which replicates the original findings of Asch very closely and which is in line with other replications that were conducted predominately with American students [ 12 ]. Together with recent studies from Japan [ 14 ], and Bosnia and Herzegowina [ 15 ], our study provides further evidence that the influence of groups on individuals’ judgments is a universal phenomenon, and is still valid today. Furthermore, we incentivized the decisions and find a drop of the error rate by 8%-points to 25%. Hence, monetary incentives do not eliminate the effect of group pressure. This finding sheds doubt on former results which predominately show the opposite effect, namely that incentives increase compliance [ 5 , 6 ].

Moreover, our study suggests that group pressure is not only influential in the simple line task but also when it comes to political opinions. We randomized the groups’ response to five different political statements and find an average conformity rate of 38%. Hence, these results suggest that the original finding of Asch can also be generalized to matters of opinion. This result is in line with former evidence by Crutchfield [ 8 ], and Mallinson and Hatemi [ 9 ]. However, both of these studies had only small sample sizes of 50 and 58 subjects respectively, which called for further replication studies. Finally, we measured the Big Five, intelligence, self-esteem and social approval. With the exception of openness, our study finds no support that these personality traits are statistically significantly related to the susceptibility of group pressure.

Of course, our study has some limitations, which suggest a number of further research questions. First, we used a relatively large sample of 202 subjects providing more statistical power than former replications and extensions of the Asch experiment; however, our subjects were also students, and hence, it would be important to have further replications with non-student samples. This would allow further investigations of the susceptibility to group pressure with respect to age, different occupational groups, different social backgrounds, and different levels of social experience.

Second, the subjects we investigate are strangers. That means the single naïve subjects did not know the confederates. An interesting question for further research would be, whether group pressure is stronger among non-strangers or whether dissent becomes more acceptable among a group of friends.

Third, we demonstrate that monetary incentives reduce the error rate. However, our incentives were one Swiss franc for every correct answer, and hence small. Thus, the interesting question remains whether larger incentives reduce the error rate further, or can even lead to the elimination of it.

Fourth, the political statements we choose are relatively moderate and general. This leaves the question open as to whether subjects would also conform to more extreme or socially less acceptable statements. Furthermore, our subjects might have rarely thought about the statements we provided, leaving the question of what would happen with respect to statements about which subjects had stronger opinions or which are more related to their identity.

With the exception of openness all personality traits considered (e.g. intelligence, self-esteem, need for social approval) are not related to conformity. This raises a number of very interesting research questions. One possibility is that the traits were not measured good enough, and that measurement errors impede the identification of these individual differences. This concern applies particularly to the measurement of the Big Five where we relied on the short 10-item version suggested by Rammstedt et al. [ 37 ]. Hence, the puzzling result that openness leads to less conformity must be replicated before it can count as a reliable finding. However, the finding is in line with the assumption of Eck and Gebauer [ 30 ]. Another possibility is that other personality traits are more important when it comes to conformity behavior. Hence, there is much room for further interesting research concerning conformity behavior in situations of group pressure.

Supporting information

Acknowledgments.

We like to thank our student assistants for helping us with the data collection. Their names are: Yvonne Aregger, Elias Balmer, Ambar Conca, Davide Della Porta, Shania Flück, Julian Gerber, Anna Graf, Ina Gutjahr, Kim Gvozdic, Anna Häberli, Chiara Heiss, Paula Kühne, Jenny Mosimann, Remo Parisi, Elena Raich, Virginia Reinhard, Fiona Schläppi, Maria Tournas, Angela Ventrici, Marco Zbinden, Sarah Zwyssig.

Data Availability

The data used in this study is publicly available in the repository of the University of Bern at https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/169645 .

Funding Statement

The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

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Asch Study Reimagined: Navigating the Labyrinth of Conformity in the Contemporary Mind

Summary: A recent study replicates and extends Solomon Asch’s famous conformity experiments, revealing intriguing insights about human behavior.

The research demonstrates that monetary incentives reduce conformity errors in line-judging tasks, though social influence remains a factor. It also extends Asch’s findings to political opinions, showing a significant rate of conformity.

Interestingly, the study finds that openness, but not other personality traits like intelligence or self-esteem, is inversely related to conformity, challenging long-held assumptions about social influence.

• The study replicated Asch’s experiment with 210 participants, finding a 33% error rate in standard line-judging tasks and a 25% error rate when monetary incentives were involved.
• When examining political opinions, the conformity rate was 38%, suggesting that social influence extends beyond simple perceptual tasks to more complex beliefs.
• Among various personality traits studied, only ‘openness’ from the Big Five was found to be significantly related to lower susceptibility to conformity, contrary to expectations about traits like intelligence or self-esteem.

Source: Neuroscience News

In the realm of social psychology, few experiments have garnered as much attention and debate as Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments from the 1950s. These groundbreaking studies highlighted the compelling power of social influence, showing how individuals could be swayed by group opinions even against their own senses.

Fast-forward to the present, a recent study seeks to revisit these pivotal experiments, offering fresh insights into the dynamics of conformity in today’s context.

The primary aim of the new research was fourfold: to replicate Asch’s original experiment with a contemporary cohort, to assess the impact of monetary incentives on conformity, to extend the exploration of conformity to the domain of political opinions, and to investigate the relationship between various personality traits and the propensity to conform.

Conducted with 210 participants, the study meticulously replicated Asch’s original line-judging task, while introducing nuanced variations to probe deeper into the psychological underpinnings of conformity.

One of the study’s most compelling findings was the persistent influence of social pressure, even when monetary incentives were introduced. While financial rewards did reduce the error rate from 33% to 25% in line-judging tasks, the fact that a significant proportion of participants still conformed to the group’s incorrect judgment underscores the robustness of social influence.

This finding adds a new layer to our understanding of conformity, suggesting that human behavior in group contexts is not solely driven by rational, self-interested calculations but is also significantly influenced by the desire to align with social norms.

Expanding the scope of Asch’s work, the study also ventured into the realm of political opinions. The researchers found a conformity rate of 38%, indicating that social influence extends beyond simple perceptual tasks to the more complex territory of beliefs and opinions.

This extension is particularly relevant in our current era, where political discourse is increasingly polarized and influenced by group dynamics. The findings suggest that the social environment can significantly shape political views, raising important questions about the formation of public opinion and the role of social conformity in political decision-making.

Another intriguing aspect of the study was its exploration of the relationship between personality traits and susceptibility to conformity. Contrary to what one might expect, the research found that traits like intelligence, self-esteem, and the need for social approval were not convincingly related to conformity. The only exception was ‘openness’ from the Big Five personality traits, which showed an inverse relationship with conformity.

This challenges some traditional assumptions about the types of personalities that are more likely to conform and suggests that a willingness to entertain new ideas and experiences might actually buffer against social pressure.

The study also raises critical questions about the universality of Asch’s findings. While the original experiments were predominantly conducted with American student samples, this research, along with other international studies, suggests that the influence of groups on individual judgment is a universal phenomenon, prevalent across different cultures and contexts.

This universality speaks to the fundamental nature of social influence in human psychology and underscores its relevance across diverse social and cultural landscapes.

However, the study is not without limitations. The sample, composed predominantly of students, highlights the need for further research with more diverse participant pools.

Additionally, the study’s participants were strangers, leaving open the question of whether group pressure would be stronger or weaker among acquaintances or friends.

Furthermore, the study’s use of relatively moderate and general political statements raises the question of whether the findings would hold true for more extreme or divisive opinions.

Despite these limitations, the study offers a compelling modern reexamination of Asch’s conformity experiments. It not only reaffirms the enduring power of social influence but also extends our understanding of how this influence manifests in the context of political opinions and the role of personality traits in susceptibility to conformity.

The findings have far-reaching implications for various domains, from understanding group dynamics in organizational settings to the shaping of public opinion in the political arena.

In conclusion, this study not only pays homage to a classic experiment but also propels it into the contemporary era, offering new insights and raising intriguing questions for future research.

It serves as a reminder of the complex interplay between individual psychology and social dynamics, a relationship that continues to fascinate and challenge researchers in the field of social psychology.

About this conformity and social neuroscience research news

Author: Neuroscience News Communications Source: Neuroscience News Contact: Neuroscience News Communications – Neuroscience News Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News

Original Research: Open access. “ The power of social influence: A replication and extension of the Asch experiment ” by Axel Franzen et al. PLOS ONE

The power of social influence: A replication and extension of the Asch experiment

In this paper, we pursue four goals: First, we replicate the original Asch experiment with five confederates and one naïve subject in each group (N = 210).

Second, in a randomized trial we incentivize the decisions in the line experiment and demonstrate that monetary incentives lower the error rate, but that social influence is still at work.

Third, we confront subjects with different political statements and show that the power of social influence can be generalized to matters of political opinion.

Finally, we investigate whether intelligence, self-esteem, the need for social approval, and the Big Five are related to the susceptibility to provide conforming answers.

We find an error rate of 33% for the standard length-of-line experiment which replicates the original findings by Asch (1951, 1955, 1956). Furthermore, in the incentivized condition the error rate decreases to 25%.

For political opinions we find a conformity rate of 38%. However, besides openness, none of the investigated personality traits are convincingly related to the susceptibility of group pressure.

One thing I think is worth looking into is of those who showed the trait of openness, what percentage of them were ADHD or Autistic? It seems many people with ADHD or Autism exhibit openness, so I think it would be nice if it could be confirmed that these groups of people actually act as protection against society fully conforming to destructive ideas, because they are less likely to conform.

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Elevator Groupthink: An Ingenious 1962 Psychology Experiment in Conformity

By maria popova.

The psychology of conformity is something we’ve previously explored, but its study dates back to the 1950s, when Gestalt scholar and social psychology pioneer Solomon Asch , known today as the Asch conformity experiments . Among them is this famous elevator experiment, originally conducted as a part of a 1962 Candid Camera episode titled “Face the Rear.”

Ultimately, diversity contributes not just by adding different perspectives to the group but also by making it easier for individuals to say what they really think. […] Independence of opinion is both a crucial ingredient in collectively wise decisions and one of the hardest things to keep intact. Because diversity helps preserve that independence, it’s hard to have a collectively wise group without it.”

Perhaps the role of the global Occupy movement and other expressions of contemporary civic activism is that of a cultural confederate, spurring others — citizens, politicians, CEOs — to face the front of the elevator at last.

Complement with How To Be a Nonconformist , a satirical masterpiece from the same era, written and illustrated by a teenage girl.

HT Not Exactly Rocket Science

— Published January 13, 2012 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/01/13/asch-elevator-experiment/ —

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The Most Famous Social Psychology Experiments Ever Performed

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Emily is a board-certified science editor who has worked with top digital publishing brands like Voices for Biodiversity, Study.com, GoodTherapy, Vox, and Verywell.

Social experiments often seek to answer questions about how people behave in groups or how the presence of others impacts individual behavior. Over the years, social psychologists have explored these questions by conducting experiments .

The results of some of the most famous social psychology experiments remain relevant (and often quite controversial) today. Such experiments give us valuable information about human behavior and how group influence can impact our actions in social situations.

At a Glance

Some of the most famous social psychology experiments include Asch's conformity experiments, Bandura's Bobo doll experiments, the Stanford prison experiment, and Milgram's obedience experiments. Some of these studies are quite controversial for various reasons, including how they were conducted, serious ethical concerns, and what their results suggested.

The Asch Conformity Experiments

What do you do when you know you're right but the rest of the group disagrees with you? Do you bow to group pressure?

In a series of famous experiments conducted during the 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch demonstrated that people would give the wrong answer on a test to fit in with the rest of the group.

In Asch's famous conformity experiments , people were shown a line and then asked to select a line of a matching length from a group of three. Asch also placed confederates in the group who would intentionally choose the wrong lines.

The results revealed that when other people picked the wrong line, participants were likely to conform and give the same answers as the rest of the group.

What the Results Revealed

While we might like to believe that we would resist group pressure (especially when we know the group is wrong), Asch's results revealed that people are surprisingly susceptible to conformity .

Not only did Asch's experiment teach us a great deal about the power of conformity, but it also inspired a whole host of additional research on how people conform and obey, including Milgram's infamous obedience experiments.

The Bobo Doll Experiment

Does watching violence on television cause children to behave more aggressively? In a series of experiments conducted during the early 1960s, psychologist Albert Bandura set out to investigate the impact of observed aggression on children's behavior.

In his Bobo doll experiments , children would watch an adult interacting with a Bobo doll. In one condition, the adult model behaved passively toward the doll, but in another, the adult would kick, punch, strike, and yell at the doll.

The results revealed that children who watched the adult model behave violently toward the doll were likelier to imitate the aggressive behavior later on.​

The Impact of Bandura's Social Psychology Experiment

The debate over the degree to which violence on television, movies, gaming, and other media influences children's behavior continues to rage on today, so it perhaps comes as no surprise that Bandura's findings are still so relevant.

The experiment has also helped inspire hundreds of additional studies exploring the impacts of observed aggression and violence.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

During the early 1970s, Philip Zimbardo set up a fake prison in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department, recruited participants to play prisoners and guards, and played the role of the prison warden.

The experiment was designed to look at the effect that a prison environment would have on behavior, but it quickly became one of the most famous and controversial experiments of all time.

Results of the Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford prison experiment was initially slated to last a full two weeks. It ended after just six days. Why? Because the participants became so enmeshed in their assumed roles, the guards became almost sadistically abusive, and the prisoners became anxious, depressed, and emotionally disturbed.

While the Stanford prison experiment was designed to look at prison behavior, it has since become an emblem of how powerfully people are influenced by situations.  

Ethical Concerns

Part of the notoriety stems from the study's treatment of the participants. The subjects were placed in a situation that created considerable psychological distress. So much so that the study had to be halted less than halfway through the experiment.

The study has long been upheld as an example of how people yield to the situation, but critics have suggested that the participants' behavior may have been unduly influenced by Zimbardo himself in his capacity as the mock prison's "warden."  

Recent Criticisms

The Stanford prison experiment has long been controversial due to the serious ethical concerns of the research, but more recent evidence casts serious doubts on the study's scientific merits.

An examination of study records indicates participants faked their behavior to either get out of the experiment or "help" prove the researcher's hypothesis. The experimenters also appear to have encouraged certain behaviors to help foster more abusive behavior.

The Milgram Experiments

Following the trial of Adolph Eichmann for war crimes committed during World War II, psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to better understand why people obey. "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" Milgram wondered.

The results of Milgram's controversial obedience experiments were astonishing and continue to be both thought-provoking and controversial today.

What the Social Psychology Experiment Involved

The study involved ordering participants to deliver increasingly painful shocks to another person. While the victim was simply a confederate pretending to be injured, the participants fully believed that they were giving electrical shocks to the other person.

Even when the victim was protesting or complaining of a heart condition, 65% of the participants continued to deliver painful, possibly fatal shocks on the experimenter's orders.

Obviously, no one wants to believe that they are capable of inflicting pain or torture on another human being simply on the orders of an authority figure. The results of the obedience experiments are disturbing because they reveal that people are much more obedient than they may believe.

Controversy and Recent Criticisms

The study is also controversial because it suffers from ethical concerns, primarily the psychological distress it created for the participants. More recent findings suggest that other problems question the study's findings.

Some participants were coerced into continuing against their wishes. Many participants appeared to have guessed that the learner was faking their responses, and other variations showed that many participants refused to continue the shocks.

What This Means For You

There are many interesting and famous social psychology experiments that can reveal a lot about our understanding of social behavior and influence. However, it is important to be aware of the controversies, limitations, and criticisms of these studies. More recent research may reflect differing results. In some cases, the re-evaluation of classic studies has revealed serious ethical and methodological flaws that call the results into question.

Jeon, HL.  The environmental factor within the Solomon Asch Line Test .  International Journal of Social Science and Humanity.  2014;4(4):264-268. doi:10.7763/IJSSH.2014.V4.360 

Bandura and Bobo . Association for Psychological Science.

Zimbardo, G. The Stanford Prison Experiment: a simulation study on the psychology of imprisonment .

Le Texier T.  Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment.   Am Psychol.  2019;74(7):823-839. doi:10.1037/amp0000401

Blum B.  The lifespan of a lie .  Medium .

Baker PC. Electric Schlock: Did Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiments prove anything? Pacific Standard .

Perry G.  Deception and illusion in Milgram's accounts of the obedience experiments .  Theory Appl Ethics . 2013;2(2):79-92.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."