conform elevator experiment

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Bethany’s elevator experiment a case of backward research

Social conformity is everywhere. The clothes we wear. The rules we follow. The social roles we play. “Conformity is all around us,” said Jennifer Wosmek, a psychology instructor at Bethany Lutheran College. “But it’s hard to get at systematically.”

But Wosmek’s students found a way — and they used an elevator.

The idea to research social conformity in elevators came from a Candid Camera stunt in which a group of individuals are facing the back of an elevator when a new rider enters. Some follow suit, even though the notion of facing the back of a moving elevator is completely at odds with normal circumstances.

The video is sometimes cited in psychology textbooks and has become staple viewing in social psychology courses (yes, there’s a clip on YouTube). Bethany students, however, were unable to find even one research study that attempted to replicate the results.

So, the six students in Wosmek’s testing and measurements course crafted their own study and spent weeks gathering data at a large mall in the Twin Cities. (Wosmek said she does not have permission to use the mall’s name.) “This project gave us a chance to see what conformity really looks like,” senior Hayley Whitcomb said.

In one case, a man and woman immediately conformed when the elevator doors opened. They remained backward for the duration of the one-floor ride — and then backed out of the elevator when it stopped. In other cases, confused riders would turn backward and then ask if, perhaps, a second door existed that was going to open somewhere else.

Some riders turned only partially backward in an apparent effort to satisfy both their everyday sensibilities and their urge to conform.

“During our baseline testing, no one stood backward,” senior Courtney Nelson said. “But when we implemented (the experiment), it was interesting to see that people would actually do this.”

As they found, however, some are more likely to conform than others.

Age, for instance, predicts conformity.

The youngest conform most often (more than 40 percent of the time) while the oldest are least likely to conform (between 14 and 24 percent depending on if they are a middle-aged adult or lateaged adult, respectively).

Men are more likely to conform fully while women demonstrated higher levels of partial conformity. Study participants were also more likely to conform if there were a larger number of people facing backward.

“This project was really hands- on,” senior Shamaryah Miller said. “We were able to take what we learned in a book and really apply it.”

And that, students said, was the real lesson learned.

Conducting thought experiments on conformity is one thing, but devising an experiment that is procedurally sound is another. To that end, Wosmek’s students spent several weeks developing procedures and protocols to ensure their study was airtight.

They recruited dozens of campus volunteers to serve as “prompts” — the people who would stand backward in the elevator. Those volunteers were told to dress in different clothing styles, to avoid laughing or showing expression during the trials and to exit the elevator in separate directions so that onlookers wouldn’t get suspicious.

Each student was given different variables for their trials and made sure to record data secretly. Even before taking their experiment into the field, they ran several practice sessions in elevators downtown and at Minnesota State University.

The result, Wosmek said, was a “solid piece of research.” She said she’s even hoping to replicate the experiment next year with a university in China.

“This kind of experience turns students on to research,” Wosmek said. “It gets them involved in that role and seeing themselves as psychologists.”

December 20, 2011

This article originally appeared in the December 12 edition of the Free Press , Mankato. It was authored by Tanner Kent, Free Press staff writer.

Learn more about studying psychology at Bethany.

The Psychology of Conformity

The psychology of conformity is something we've previously explored, but its study dates back to the 1950s, with 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 entitled "Face the Rear."

But, while amusing in its tragicomic divulgence of our capacity for groupthink, this experiment tells only half the story of Asch's work. As James Surowiecki reminds us in the excellent The Wisdom of Crowds , Asch went on to reveal something equally important -- that while people slip into conformity with striking ease, it also doesn't take much to get them to snap out of it. Asch demonstrated this in a series of experiments, planting a confederate to defy the crowd by engaging in the sensible, rather than nonsensical, behavior. That, it turned out, was just enough. Having just one peer contravene the group made subjects eager to express their true thoughts. Surowiecki concludes:

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.

HT Not Exactly Rocket Science .

This post also appears on Brain Pickings , an  Atlantic  partner site.

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How to Test Conformity With Your Own Psychology Experiment

Plus, Questions to Spark Conformity Experiment Ideas

skynesher / Getty Images

• Famous Experiments
• Example Experiment
• Experiment Ideas
• Additional Tips

Conformity involves adopting certain attitudes or behaviors to fit in with a particular group of people. Conformity experiments can be interesting project ideas for a psychology class, in addition to just being fun to perform.

Here we share some conformity experiments that have sought to better understand how people conform . These can be used as inspiration when developing our own experiments. We also provide a few questions that can help us come up with even more conformity experiment ideas.

Famous Conformity Experiments

One of the most well-known series of conformity experiments was conducted by psychologist Solomon Asch in the 1950s. Known as the Asch conformity experiments , these studies demonstrated the impact of social pressure on individual behavior.  

Participants in these studies were told that they were in a vision experiment and asked to look at three lines of different lengths to determine which was the longest. They were then placed with a group that they thought included others in the study. In reality, the others were actually in on the experiment.

After a few trials where everyone stated the correct answer, the subjects who were in on the experiment began choosing an incorrect response. When surrounded by people citing an incorrect answer, 75% of the true study subjects also gave an incorrect response to at least one of the line-length questions.

Other Conformity Experiments

Another popular conformity experiment was performed on the TV show Candid Camera. It involved a group of people on an elevator who all stood facing the rear of the elevator. Inevitably, everyone else who got on ended up also facing the rear so as not to stand out from the rest.

One young man even turned repeatedly to every side, along with the rest of the group, and took off his hat when the others did.

Other conformity experiments that have been performed include:

• Having a group of people stare up at a building
• Picketing with blank signs and pamphlets for no specific cause
• When one student leaves a classroom, the teacher has everyone else stand up when the student returns and sits down

A Conformity Experiment Example

Imagine that a student is in a math class and the instructor asks a basic math question. What is 8 x 4? The student knows that the correct answer is 32. However, when the teacher begins asking other students in the room for the answer, each one says that it is 27. How does the student respond?

This is a classic example of a conformity experiment in action. When the teacher finally gets to the student, does the student trust their own math skills and provide the correct answer or do they go along with the rest of the group and say that the answer is 27—even when they know that this is an incorrect response?

For some, the desire to fit in and belong is so strong that they will provide an answer that they know is incorrect. This helps them avoid being considered an "outsider" to others in the group.

Conformity Experiment Ideas

One way to envision our own experiment is to consider some of the conformity experiments that have been performed in the past. It can also be helpful to consider a few questions we could answer in our own psychology experiment.

Here are some questions that may spark a few conformity experiment ideas:

• How does group size impact conformity? Try the experiment with different numbers of helpers to see how many other people must be present before a person starts conforming to the group.
• What effect does age have on conformity? Try the experiment with participants in different age groups to see if the results differ.
• What's the impact of gender on conformity ? Experiment to see if a participant is more likely to conform if other participants are of the same gender. What are the results if no other participants share their gender?
• How does the situation influence conformity? Are people more likely to conform in certain settings, such as a classroom, than they are in more natural, everyday settings? Run trials in various settings to see if there is a difference.

Additional Conformity Experiment Tips

Performing a psychology experiment for class can be a bit intimidating. Before beginning, we should always talk with the instructor about our experiment ideas to be sure that we have permission to carry out our project. In some cases, we may have to submit our idea for review beforehand to receive permission to experiment with human participants.

Conducting conformity experiments is a great way to learn more about the impacts that groups can have on individuals. Playing around with certain variables can widen our understanding of how far people will go to fit in, making them good conformity experiment ideas to try.

Kim D, Hommel B. Social cognition 2.0: Toward mechanistic theorizing . Front Psychol . 2019;10:2643. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02643

Sowden S, Koletsi S, Lymberopoulos E, Militaru E, Catmur C, Bird G. Quantifying compliance and acceptance through public and private social conformity . Conscious Cogn . 2018;65:359-367. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2018.08.009

Howard J. Bandwagon effect and authority bias . In: Cognitive Errors and Diagnostic Mistakes . 2018:21-56. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-93224-8_3

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

Watch These Awkward Elevator Rides From an Old Episode of Candid Camera

The american prank television show put a psychology conformity theory to the test..

Elevator rides can be awkward. The tiny space forces passengers into close quarters as they slowly scale up and down buildings. In this clip from a ’60s episode of the American hidden camera show Candid Camera , the first unsuspecting rider, a middle-aged man in a trench coat, gets an even more unusual elevator experience. As other passengers follow behind him the man finds all of them oddly facing the back wall.

“You’ll see how this man in the trench coat tries to maintain his individuality,” says the host of the show, Allen Funt. The man in the trench coat rubs his face and nose in confusion at the other passengers. “He looks at his watch, but he’s really making an excuse for turning just a little bit more toward the wall.”  

In the 1960s, social conformity experiments got all the laughs. The 1962 Candid Camera episode “ Face the Rear ” tested the Asch conformity experiments. Polish psychologist Solomon Asch developed the series of studies in the 1950s, investigating how individuals succumbed to or defied a majority group, and the effects of such behavior. And what better environment to conduct these psychology experiments than in an elevator recorded by the Candid Camera crew.

Today, psychologists and researchers still turn to and Asch’s experiments, the famous Candid Camera clip popularly shown in psychology classes. “Conformity is all around us,” Jennifer Wosmek, a psychology professor at Bethany Lutheran College, told Free Press. “But it’s hard to get at systematically.”

Wosmek and colleagues at Bethany Lutheran College replicated the elevator experiment in 2011, and found similar awkward situations seen in the 1962 clip. People turned around to match the other passengers without question, while others confusedly asked if there was a second door that opened. They also found that men conformed more fully, while women often only did so partially. Younger people also conformed much more often than older.

Perhaps the Candid Camera victim who gets the most laughs is the young man who enters the elevator at the 1:20-mark. The Candid Camera crew in the elevator turn multiple directions in the elevator—each time the doors open, the young man has also turned to face the same way. He even follows along without question when the men take of their hats and put them back on.

While the experiment on the prank television show was for laughs, it also reveals how powerful conformity can be.

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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.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

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.

Allen, V. L., & Levine, J. M. (1968). Social support, dissent and conformity. Sociometry , 138-149.

Asch, S. E. (1951). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgment. In H. Guetzkow (ed.) Groups, leadership and men . Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Press.

Asch, S. E. (1952). Group forces in the modification and distortion of judgments.

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.

Longman, W., Vaughan, G., & Hogg, M. (1995). Introduction to social psychology .

Perrin, S., & Spencer, C. (1980). The Asch effect: a child of its time? Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 32, 405-406.

Sherif, M., & Sherif, C. W. (1953). Groups in harmony and tension . New York: Harper & Row.

Social Psychology

Conformity and Obedience

Learning objectives.

• Describe the results of research on conformity, and distinguish between normative and informational social influence.
• Describe Stanley Milgram’s experiment and its implications

Solomon Asch conducted several experiments in the 1950s to determine how people are affected by the thoughts and behaviors of other people. In one study, a group of participants was shown a series of printed line segments of different lengths: a, b, and c (Figure 1). Participants were then shown a fourth line segment: x. They were asked to identify which line segment from the first group (a, b, or c) most closely resembled the fourth line segment in length.

Each group of participants had only one true, naïve subject. The remaining members of the group were confederates of the researcher. A confederate is a person who is aware of the experiment and works for the researcher. Confederates are used to manipulate social situations as part of the research design, and the true, naïve participants believe that confederates are, like them, uninformed participants in the experiment. In Asch’s study, the confederates identified a line segment that was obviously shorter than the target line—a wrong answer. The naïve participant then had to identify aloud the line segment that best matched the target line segment.

How often do you think the true participant aligned with the confederates’ response? That is, how often do you think the group influenced the participant, and the participant gave the wrong answer? Asch (1955) found that 76% of participants conformed to group pressure at least once by indicating the incorrect line. Conformity is the change in a person’s behavior to go along with the group, even if he does not agree with the group. Why would people give the wrong answer? What factors would increase or decrease someone giving in or conforming to group pressure?

The Asch effect is the influence of the group majority on an individual’s judgment.

What factors make a person more likely to yield to group pressure? Research shows that the size of the majority, the presence of another dissenter, and the public or relatively private nature of responses are key influences on conformity.

• The size of the majority: The greater the number of people in the majority, the more likely an individual will conform. There is, however, an upper limit: a point where adding more members does not increase conformity. In Asch’s study, conformity increased with the number of people in the majority—up to seven individuals. At numbers beyond seven, conformity leveled off and decreased slightly (Asch, 1955).
• The presence of another dissenter: If there is at least one dissenter, conformity rates drop to near zero (Asch, 1955).
• The public or private nature of the responses: When responses are made publicly (in front of others), conformity is more likely; however, when responses are made privately (e.g., writing down the response), conformity is less likely (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955).

The finding that conformity is more likely to occur when responses are public than when they are private is the reason government elections require voting in secret, so we are not coerced by others (Figure 2). The Asch effect can be easily seen in children when they have to publicly vote for something. For example, if the teacher asks whether the children would rather have extra recess, no homework, or candy, once a few children vote, the rest will comply and go with the majority. In a different classroom, the majority might vote differently, and most of the children would comply with that majority. When someone’s vote changes if it is made in public versus private, this is known as compliance. Compliance can be a form of conformity. Compliance is going along with a request or demand, even if you do not agree with the request. In Asch’s studies, the participants complied by giving the wrong answers, but privately did not accept that the obvious wrong answers were correct.

Now that you have learned about the Asch line experiments, why do you think the participants conformed? The correct answer to the line segment question was obvious, and it was an easy task. Researchers have categorized the motivation to conform into two types: normative social influence and informational social influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955).

In normative social influence , people conform to the group norm to fit in, to feel good, and to be accepted by the group. However, with informational social influence , people conform because they believe the group is competent and has the correct information, particularly when the task or situation is ambiguous. What type of social influence was operating in the Asch conformity studies? Since the line judgment task was unambiguous, participants did not need to rely on the group for information. Instead, participants complied to fit in and avoid ridicule, an instance of normative social influence.

An example of informational social influence may be what to do in an emergency situation. Imagine that you are in a movie theater watching a film and what seems to be smoke comes in the theater from under the emergency exit door. You are not certain that it is smoke—it might be a special effect for the movie, such as a fog machine. When you are uncertain you will tend to look at the behavior of others in the theater. If other people show concern and get up to leave, you are likely to do the same. However, if others seem unconcerned, you are likely to stay put and continue watching the movie (Figure 3).

How would you have behaved if you were a participant in Asch’s study? Many students say they would not conform, that the study is outdated, and that people nowadays are more independent. To some extent this may be true. Research suggests that overall rates of conformity may have reduced since the time of Asch’s research. Furthermore, efforts to replicate Asch’s study have made it clear that many factors determine how likely it is that someone will demonstrate conformity to the group. These factors include the participant’s age, gender, and socio-cultural background (Bond & Smith, 1996; Larsen, 1990; Walker & Andrade, 1996).

You can view the transcript for “The Asch Experiment” here (opens in new window) .

Stanley Milgram’s Experiment

Conformity is one effect of the influence of others on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Another form of social influence is obedience to authority. Obedience is the change of an individual’s behavior to comply with a demand by an authority figure. People often comply with the request because they are concerned about a consequence if they do not comply. To demonstrate this phenomenon, we review another classic social psychology experiment.

Stanley Milgram was a social psychology professor at Yale who was influenced by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal. Eichmann’s defense for the atrocities he committed was that he was “just following orders.” Milgram (1963) wanted to test the validity of this defense, so he designed an experiment and initially recruited 40 men for his experiment. The volunteer participants were led to believe that they were participating in a study to improve learning and memory. The participants were told that they were to teach other students (learners) correct answers to a series of test items. The participants were shown how to use a device that they were told delivered electric shocks of different intensities to the learners. The participants were told to shock the learners if they gave a wrong answer to a test item—that the shock would help them to learn. The participants gave (or believed they gave) the learners shocks, which increased in 15-volt increments, all the way up to 450 volts. The participants did not know that the learners were confederates and that the confederates did not actually receive shocks.

In response to a string of incorrect answers from the learners, the participants obediently and repeatedly shocked them. The confederate learners cried out for help, begged the participant teachers to stop, and even complained of heart trouble. Yet, when the researcher told the participant-teachers to continue the shock, 65% of the participants continued the shock to the maximum voltage and to the point that the learner became unresponsive (Figure 4). What makes someone obey authority to the point of potentially causing serious harm to another person?

Several variations of the original Milgram experiment were conducted to test the boundaries of obedience. When certain features of the situation were changed, participants were less likely to continue to deliver shocks (Milgram, 1965). For example, when the setting of the experiment was moved to an office building, the percentage of participants who delivered the highest shock dropped to 48%. When the learner was in the same room as the teacher, the highest shock rate dropped to 40%. When the teachers’ and learners’ hands were touching, the highest shock rate dropped to 30%. When the researcher gave the orders by phone, the rate dropped to 23%. These variations show that when the humanity of the person being shocked was increased, obedience decreased. Similarly, when the authority of the experimenter decreased, so did obedience.

This case is still very applicable today. What does a person do if an authority figure orders something done? What if the person believes it is incorrect, or worse, unethical? In a study by Martin and Bull (2008), midwives privately filled out a questionnaire regarding best practices and expectations in delivering a baby. Then, a more senior midwife and supervisor asked the junior midwives to do something they had previously stated they were opposed to. Most of the junior midwives were obedient to authority, going against their own beliefs.

Link to learning

Watch a modern example of the Milgram experiment here .

• Conduct a conformity study the next time you are in an elevator. After you enter the elevator, stand with your back toward the door. See if others conform to your behavior. Did your results turn out as expected?
• Most students adamantly state that they would never have turned up the voltage in the Milgram experiment. Do you think you would have refused to shock the learner? Looking at your own past behavior, what evidence suggests that you would go along with the order to increase the voltage?

CC licensed content, Shared previously

• Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience. Authored by : OpenStax College. Located at : https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/12-4-conformity-compliance-and-obedience . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

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• The Asch Experiment. Authored by : Question Everything. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA-gbpt7Ts8 . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
• abc news Primetime Milgram. Authored by : EightYellowFlowers. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwqNP9HRy7Y&list=PLsjOSJm46miabqNKVfh8VrzHtKZym3lQs&index=4 . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License

person who works for a researcher and is aware of the experiment, but who acts as a participant; used to manipulate social situations as part of the research design

when individuals change their behavior to go along with the group even if they do not agree with the group

group majority influences an individual’s judgment, even when that judgment is inaccurate

change of behavior to please an authority figure or to avoid aversive consequences

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The line between conformity and resistance

Jolanda Jetten and Matthew J. Hornsey take another look at Solomon Asch’s famous line-judgement studies.

09 December 2014

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.   Mark Twain The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. Friedrich Nietzsche In most Western cultures, there is a prevalent notion that one should stand strong in the face of pressures to conform. Doing so is seen as an act of courage and personal strength, while going along with the majority is considered a sign of weakness – what cowards and weak-willed people do. Indeed, as the above two quotes indicate, some novelists and philosophers have argued that we should worry if we find ourselves in the majority: by definition, being truly in charge of one's own destiny means standing clear from the crowd.

Perhaps there is so much admiration for those who are able to resist conformity precisely because it is so difficult not to go along with the crowd. At least, this is the message that comes across from classic social psychological theorising. The so-called 'line-experiment studies' by Solomon Asch have been particularly important in demonstrating the power of conformity in a group. These studies have often been interpreted as showing how quickly people give in to conformity pressures and how easy it is to get them to uncritically adopt the majority point of view; this to such an extent that we conform to a majority when it is obvious that the majority is wrong and we are right. Let us discuss these studies in greater detail.

The line-judgement studies

Imagine that you were a participant in one of these studies. After arriving at the laboratory, you meet six other participants and you are told that you are taking part in a psychological study on visual judgements. The experimenter informs you that you will be comparing the length of lines. You are shown two white cards (see Figure 1). One card has a reference line on it and on the other card, three comparison lines are drawn (labelled A, B, and C). The experimenter tells you that it is your task is to say out loud which of the three comparison lines is similar in length to the reference line. This looks like an easy task.

Participants sit around a table and on each trial they are asked to call out their answers in the order in which they are seated. You are seated in the sixth position, where all but one of the others will have to call out their response before you. The study starts uneventfully and on the first couple of trials everyone agrees which comparison line is similar in length to the reference line. You start to get bored. But then, suddenly, something unexpected happens: the first participant calls out the wrong answer. That is strange… is there something wrong with the person's vision? It must be. But then, the second and third person give the same answer as the first person. Participants four and five also call out the line that so clearly fails to match the reference line. What is happening? Are they all blind? Then it is your turn. This is tricky! What should you say? Should you go along with the majority (even though you know they are wrong), or should you stand out by calling out the obviously correct answer?

There are two things the experimenter has not told you about this study. First, the other participants are not participants like you but assistants of the experimenter ('confederates') who are instructed to call out wrong answers on about half of the trials (so called 'critical' trials). Second, even though the study was introduced as a study on visual perception, the actual aim of the study is to examine conformity. More specifically, the goal is to examine conformity to a majority when that majority is clearly wrong.

Results showed that when all people before you clearly give the wrong answer it is difficult to withstand conforming. Asch found that 76 per cent of participants conformed at least once to the wrong majority answer. This is a high percentage, particularly when considering that when people had to make these judgements on their own they made mistakes less than 1 per cent of the time (Asch, 1955, pp.32–33). More than four in 10 participants conformed four or more times in the 12 critical trials, with almost 11 per cent going along with the clearly wrong judgement 10 times or more.

Videos of the experiments show participants' bewilderment when they hear others call out the wrong line. Participants squint and look at the lines from different angles, just to be able to see what the majority appeared to be seeing. Asch describes the non-verbal behaviour of his participants: After the first one or two disagreements he would note certain changes in the manner and posture of this person. He would see a look of perplexity and bewilderment come over this subject's face at the contradicting judgements of the entire group. Often he becomes more active; he fidgets in his seat and changes the position of his head to look at the lines from different angles. He may turn around and whisper to his neighbour seriously or smile sheepishly. He may suddenly stand up to look more closely at the card. At other times he may become especially quiet and immobile (Asch, 1952, p.454).

The background of the line-judgement studies

Asch's interest in conformity began when he became aware of classic research on hypnosis and suggestion. In these studies, people are typically asked to give their opinion on a topic, after which they are confronted with an authority or group of people saying the opposite. When people are again asked for their opinion, they shift their views and attitudes and start to agree with the majority/authority. Asch and many others were puzzled by this finding: why would people change their mind when the authority or majority did not even present arguments to support their views? Conformity not only seemed the irrational thing to do, but also potentially dangerous: people could easily fall in the trap of conforming to others who are not only wrong, but might have evil intentions.

It was the latter danger that many ordinary Americans in the 1950s were most fearful of. With the horrors of WWII fresh in their minds, people had not forgotten the ease with which ordinary soldiers seemed to be capable of extreme atrocities because they were only doing what the majority was doing… just 'following orders'. This fear of conformity was fuelled when, at the height of the Cold War, reports emerged that suggested that American prisoners of war were brainwashed by the communists – they denounced American capitalism and appeared to fully embrace the communist cause. It was particularly troubling that it did not appear to take all that much for these soldiers to take the side of their captors.

The impact of the studies

It is not difficult to understand why the Asch studies attracted so much attention. The findings bothered people because they suggest that people appeared to be going along with the majority in a sheep-like fashion. Asch-style conformity has been argued to underlie behaviours as diverse as war crimes, eating disorders, and football hooliganism. The Asch studies appear to show that individuals are unable to resist group pressure and that they become slaves of immediate influences. On a lighter note, the insights that emerged from Asch's insights have been used to design all sorts of pranks. Best known are the elevator pranks whereby naive participants enter an elevator filled with confederates who all behave in a similar but illogical way. For example, in one prank, all confederates face the rear as soon as they enter an elevator. Very quickly the naive participants conform and turn to face the rear.

Moscovici commented in 1985 that: 'the Asch studies are one of the most dramatic illustrations of conformity, of blindly going along with the group, even when the individual realizes that by doing so he turns his back on reality and truth' (p.349). However, after closely engaging with Asch's work, we wondered whether this is really the key point to take away from the studies (see Jetten & Hornsey, 2012). Do the data really show the prevalence of conformity? Is the behaviour that Asch's participants show evidence of mindless and sheep-like behaviour? Or did people engage in sensible behaviour given the enormous conformity pressure they were facing? In what follows, we unpack these issues in greater detail.

There is another way to interpret the results. In Asch's own words, 'about one quarter of the subjects were completely independent and never agreed with the erroneous judgement of the majority' (Asch, 1955, p.33). It is also clear that only approximately 11 per cent of participants conformed on almost all trials. When looking at the results in this way, it appears that the studies do not just show evidence of conformity, they also provide evidence of significant levels of resistance and non-conformity. In fact, every one time participants conformed, they also dissented twice. In other words, participants were more likely to resist going along with the majority than to conform to it. Given this, it is ironic that the Asch line-judgement studies have become known as the 'conformity studies' when the dominant response appeared to be non-conformity and dissent.

The relatively high level of dissent found in Asch's studies is particularly striking given that the paradigm was almost uniquely designed to elicit conformity. In the line-judgement task, the potential costs of standing out were immediate (i.e. ridicule or negative attention from other people in the room). In contrast, the cost of violating what you think to be true was minimal. It doesn't matter whether you call out A or B because it doesn't involve betraying a belief that is important to you. So in this case, an analysis of pros and cons would lean the participant toward conformity. Subsequent research has shown that if people find themselves in a minority on a social issue that is important to them – a social justice issue for example – then conformity is negligible, and in fact counter-conformity is more apparent (e.g. Hornsey et al., 2003).

It is also instructive to consider what it is that those who resisted conformity pressure said. Asch reports two types of responses. First, some resisted going along with the majority because they were confident of their own judgement and responded without much comparison to the majority. Second, some resisted because they believed that the majority might be correct, but could not help themselves and had to call out what they saw. In other words, those who resisted were more concerned about being correct and being true to their own perceptions than about not fitting in.

It thus appears that Asch's line-judgement studies shed light on the conditions and experience of conformity, but also on the ability of people to go against the majority despite enormous pressure to conform. Indeed, Asch was just as much convinced of the vitality and realness of independence as he was of the power of conformity. He states that 'we should be skeptical, however, of the supposition that the power of social pressure necessarily implies uncritical submission to it: Independence and the capacity to rise above group passion are also open to human beings' (1955, p.32). He finishes his article by saying: 'anyone inclined to draw too pessimistic conclusions from this report would do to remind her/himself that the capacities for independence are not to be underestimated'.

Blind conformity?

We also asked the question of whether Asch's findings really provide evidence that conformity is a reflection of 'blind' or passive responding. In this respect, it is revealing to read what participants said when asked after the study to elaborate on what informed their responses. Many of those who conformed spontaneously mentioned that they went along with the group because, even though they did not think the majority was right, they did not want to appear foolish or like the odd-one -out. Some mentioned they did not want to 'spoil the study results' (Asch, 1955, p.33) and believed they acted in everyone's interest by not rocking the boat. Others believed that they themselves were victims of optical illusions, and that the majority was actually right – simply because it was inconceivable that so many people could be wrong. They convinced themselves that 'I must be wrong and they must be right'.

These accounts provide a number of important insights. In particular, it becomes clear that people were actively trying to make sense of the situation by developing different theories on why the majority was giving these obviously wrong responses. Accounts that people were blindly and passively following the majority do not do justice to what the experience must have been like. Participants did not sit back and let the majority overwhelm them. Rather, they engaged and actively tried to read the context in order to develop a strategy for how to resolve the disagreement between what they saw and the majority response.

The results also provide insights into how participants may have resolved this conflict. The majority of participants conformed on some trials and resisted conformity on other trials. It thus appears that most participants engaged both in conformity and in non-conformity. This is an interesting strategy because it allows participants to not only stay true to their own judgement, but also to signal to the others that one is mindful of the majority and does not desire to completely break their connection with them. Interestingly, this is a strategy that many people use intuitively when confronted with others that have a different opinion: before we put points of disagreement on the table, we highlight and explicitly acknowledge where we agree with the other.  

Asch was certainly very aware of the power of the situation. He emphasises that, once we find ourselves in the midst of a group, we are not indifferent to it and individuals are concerned about what others around them think. To take note of what others say and do is the only sensible thing to do. He says: The individual comes to experience a world that (s)he shares with others. (S)he perceives that the surroundings include him/her, as well as others, and that (s)he is in the same relation to the surroundings as others. (S)he notes that (S)he, as well as others, is converging upon the same object and responding to its identical properties. Joint action and mutual understanding require this relation of intelligibility and structural simplicity. In these terms, the 'pull' toward the group becomes understandable (Ash, 1952, p.484). In other words, going along with the majority – even though you know they are wrong – is not necessarily a sign of 'blind conformity'. Such conformity can actually be motivated by a very different concern: to show others that you are sensitive to their opinions, that you listen to them and, more generally, that you are interested in maintaining harmony within the group. Who hasn't found themselves in meetings where one decided to not speak up or express dissent and to go along with the majority (even though they were so obviously wrong) just so the group harmony would be maintained? In Asch's words, even if we find that people conform: we should be skeptical…of the supposition that the power of social pressure necessarily implies uncritical submission to it. (1955, p.32)

Putting dissent back on the agenda

What is it, then, that we should conclude from Asch's findings? We suggest that there are two points that emerge when engaging more closely with his studies and his work. The first conclusion is that there is a disconnect between the way Asch talked about his results and how his results have later been reported in social psychological textbooks. While textbooks and popular accounts present the line-judgment studies as providing evidence for the prevalence of conformity, Asch not only found more evidence for non-conformity than conformity, his findings also provide important (but often ignored) insight into dissent – of going against the majority despite enormous pressure. It seems timely to put the study of dissent back on the agenda and to engage more closely with these insights.

Second, the Asch studies have come to symbolise the often sheep-like nature of individuals. Reading his original reports of the studies, however, shows that there is so much more that is going on in these studies. Furthermore, Asch provides a much more nuanced view of what he aimed to do, and also what he felt the implications were of his work. It is not just rational to listen to what these other people have to say and at times to go along with them, it is sometimes the cleverest thing to do.

- Jolanda Jetten and Matthew J. Hornsey are Professors of Social Psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia [email protected] [email protected]

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The power of conformity: Candid Camera elevator psychology

Most of us recognize the power of the urge to conform , but you don't often see it evoked and displayed so starkly as in this old Candid Camera segment. The CC crew seeds an elevator with several crew members who do odd things like face the rear of the elevator car. See how long the naive bystanders who join them hold out against the pressure. -- Whu-oh: This is where missing video was -- update : Posted here was a wonderful segment as described above. I had found it via Google Video. It was up about 3 hours when I got an email from someone claiming to be from Candid Camera, Inc., asking me to take it down as it was not licensed and I was violating copyright. They asked very politely. I complied. But I keep having this feeling that I was part of a Candid Camera (Candid Interwebs?) experiment myself.

Course blog for INFO 2040/CS 2850/Econ 2040/SOC 2090

Behavior Cascade and Conformity

In the late 1950’s a Psychologist by the name of Solomon Asch conducted several experiments to probe humans’ need to conform to the majority of those around them.  These experiments took the shape of placing unaware, or at least mislead subjects into groups of actors who would then try to adjust the subject’s normal behavior to match their own.  At the time, many of these results came as a surprise to the testers and Dr. Asch, as they were unprepared to witness how easy it could be to manipulate an average person’s behavior given a large majority of influence.  For instance, one such experiment attempted to make unassuming elevator riders face the back wall, instead of the door as most people do.  To do this, when the subject entered the elevator, all the actors would turn together to face the opposite wall.  While confused, most test subjects followed suit and turned as well.

A Test Subject (Center) Stands Among Actors

The Subject Turned Around With All Other Riders

Another such experiment, while less novel, may provide a bit more insight into human conformity when analyzed.  This experiment tested people’s willingness to vocally oppose a majority who were making obviously wrong statements.  Specifically, participants around a table were all trying to match the length of a given line to that of three other line choices (1, 2, or 3), but only one of them was an actual participant, while the others were actors.  This experiment showed that as more of the actors chose the obviously incorrect line, the subject also chose that line more often.  Asch ran many trials of this experiment with fairly convincing trends.  For instance, knowing that they were part of “some kind” of psychology experiment, when too many actors chose the wrong line, some participants would catch on and stick with their first choice instead of conforming.

In each of these experiments, the people participating can be made into a completely connected network (including the actors), where each node is a person.  The one node of interest in each network, then, is the actual test subject.  If each node can be identified as performing a normal or abnormal behavior, then one can observe the affect of every one else’s behavior on the behavior of the test subject.  Given that the elevator test had every actor in the elevator face the wall in each experiment, then it is difficult to conclude anything except that the test subjects exhibited a high conformity rate when 100% of their “neighbors” were performing the odd behavior.  However, since the line-length test varied the number of opposing behavior participants, its easier to draw a relationship.  In the link provided, one can see that it took about 3 opposing decisions to make the subject choose the wrong line, meaning that the threshold for behavior adoption of the test subject was about 50% of its neighbors.  While not every subject conformed at this threshold, it is a good estimate for an average person.

So beware when entering strange elevators, and don’t easily stray from what feels right, because someone could be testing you…

November 17, 2016 | category: Uncategorized

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Candid Camera Reveals the Strange Psychology of Riding Elevators">The Power of Conformity: 1962 Episode of Candid Camera Reveals the Strange Psychology of Riding Elevators

in Comedy , Life , Psychology , Television | November 7th, 2016 Leave a Comment

Watch tele­vi­sion cre­ator  Allen Funt  pre­dict  flash mobs in the 1962 episode of  Can­did Cam­era above, filmed some forty years before Harp­er ’s mag­a­zine edi­tor, Bill Wasik , found­ed the move­ment with anony­mous­ly e‑mailed instruc­tions for a coor­di­nat­ed pub­lic action.

The stunt, enti­tled “Face the Rear,” was pulled off by a hand­ful of “agents”—a phrase coined by Improv Everywhere’s founder Char­lie Todd to describe the pok­er-faced par­tic­i­pants con­jur­ing a secret­ly agreed upon alter­nate real­i­ty to con­found (and  not always delight)  its tar­get sub­ject, along with unsus­pect­ing bystanders.

Com­pared to the grand-scale the­atrics that have trans­formed an upscale mar­ket into a scene from La Travi­a­ta and infil­trate sub­ways world­wide with thou­sands of pants-less rid­ers every year, this prank is quite sub­tle in the exe­cu­tion.

It suc­ceeds on our tac­it under­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes prop­er ele­va­tor behav­ior when oth­ers pas­sen­gers are present. Left to our own devices, we can sing, dance, and let the mask of pro­pri­ety slip in any num­ber of ways. Once oth­ers enter? We share the space and face for­ward.

But what if every­one who enters inex­plic­a­bly faces the back wall?

What would you do?

As hypo­thet­i­cals go, this one’s not near­ly so weighty as con­sid­er­ing whether you’d have fol­lowed the script of Stan­ley Milgram’s obe­di­ence exper­i­ments or put your own fam­i­ly at risk by hid­ing Anne Frank .

For the sub­jects of Can­did Cam­era ’s ele­va­tor gag, the pres­sure to suc­cumb to  group think  quick­ly over­ruled years of learned phys­i­cal behav­ior.

And nor­ma­tive ele­va­tor phys­i­cal­i­ty def­i­nite­ly springs from social cues, as John Dono­van, host of NPR’s “Around the Nation” said, in an inter­view with Lee Gray, author of From Ascend­ing Rooms to Express Ele­va­tors: A His­to­ry of the Pas­sen­ger Ele­va­tor in the 19th Cen­tu­ry :

I know a psy­chol­o­gist who works with teenagers who have autism who—he uses encour­ag­ing to learn skills that will allow them to be inde­pen­dent in the world to get out on their own. And one of his lessons with some of the teenagers is what to do in an ele­va­tor because he says that the typ­i­cal kid that he works with, when the door is opened, and he’s been told that he should step inside, will step inside and face the back wall because nobody has told him that every­body else in the ele­va­tor is going to turn around and face the front doors…

Can­did Camera’s  stunts were always framed as com­e­dy, though its cre­ator, Funt, was well versed in psy­chol­o­gy, hav­ing served as child psy­chol­o­gist Kurt Lewin ’s research assis­tant at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty.

In an arti­cle for the Archive of Amer­i­can Tele­vi­sion , writer Amy Loomis iden­ti­fied five premis­es into which the aver­age  Can­did Cam­era  gag could fall:

• Revers­ing nor­mal or antic­i­pat­ed pro­ce­dures
• Expos­ing basic human weak­ness­es such as igno­rance or van­i­ty
• Using the ele­ment of sur­prise
• Ful­fill­ing fan­tasies
• Plac­ing some­thing in a bizarre or inap­pro­pri­ate set­ting

“Face the Rear” was a case where con­for­mi­ty born of an unex­pect­ed rever­sal in nor­mal pro­ce­dure yield­ed laughs, at the gen­tle expense of a series of unsus­pect­ing sub­jects, whose solo rides were dis­rupt­ed by a bunch of Can­did Cam­era oper­a­tives .

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Footage from the Psy­chol­o­gy Exper­i­ment That Shocked the World: Milgram’s Obe­di­ence Study (1961)

The Lit­tle Albert Exper­i­ment: The Per­verse 1920 Study That Made a Baby Afraid of San­ta Claus & Bun­nies

This is Your Brain on Sex and Reli­gion: Exper­i­ments in Neu­ro­science

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday .

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The effects of information and social conformity on opinion change

Daniel j. mallinson.

1 School of Public Affairs, The Pennsylvania State University - Harrisburg, Middletown, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Peter K. Hatemi

2 Department of Biochemistry, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America

3 Department of Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America

4 Department of Political Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Associated Data

Data are available from the corresponding author’s Harvard Dataverse ( http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YVCPDT ).

Extant research shows that social pressures influence acts of political participation, such as turning out to vote. However, we know less about how conformity pressures affect one’s deeply held political values and opinions. Using a discussion-based experiment, we untangle the unique and combined effects of information and social pressure on a political opinion that is highly salient, politically charged, and part of one’s identity. We find that while information plays a role in changing a person’s opinion, the social delivery of that information has the greatest effect. Thirty three percent of individuals in our treatment condition change their opinion due to the social delivery of information, while ten percent respond only to social pressure and ten percent respond only to information. Participants that change their opinion due to social pressure in our experiment are more conservative politically, conscientious, and neurotic than those that did not.

Introduction

Information and persuasion are perhaps the most important drivers of opinion and behavioral changes. Far less attention, however, has been given to the role of social pressure in opinion change on politically-charged topics. This lacuna is important because humans have a demonstrated proclivity to conform to their peers when faced with social pressure. Be it in the boardroom or on Facebook, Solomon Asch and Muzafer Sherif’s classic studies hold true today. Individuals conform based on a desire to be liked by others, which Asch [ 1 , 2 ] called compliance (i.e., going along with the majority even if you do not accept their beliefs because you want to be accepted), or a desire to be right, which Sherif et al. [ 3 ] termed private acceptance (i.e., believing that the opinions of others may be more correct or informed than their own). These two broad schemas encompass many specific mechanisms, including, motivated reasoning, cognitive dissonance, utility maximization, conflict avoidance, and pursuit of positive relationships, among others. Information-based social influence and normative social influence (i.e., conformity pressure) both play important, albeit distinct, roles in the theories of compliance and private acceptance (see [ 4 ]). In both cases, humans exhibit conformity behavior; however only in private acceptance do they actually update their beliefs due to the social delivery of new information.

Extensions of Asch and Sherif’s path-breaking works have been widely applied across a number of behavioral domains [ 5 – 9 ], to include political participation. For example, significant attention has been focused on the import of conformity on voter turnout and participatory behaviors [ 10 ], including the effects of social pressure on the electoral behavior of ordinary citizens [ 11 – 15 ]. This body of work points to both the subtle and overt power of social influence on electoral behavior, yet little is known about the import of social conformity for politically charged topics in context-laden circumstances, particularly those that challenge one’s values and opinions.

Testing conformity pressure in the ideological and political identity domain may explicate whether the pressure to align with an otherwise unified group is different when dealing with politically charged topics versus context-free topics such as the size of a line or the movement of a ball of light [ 2 , 16 ]. Opinions on politically charged topics are complex, value laden, aligned with cultural norms, and not easily changed [ 17 – 21 ]. It remains unknown if the effects of social conformity pressures on political opinions are conditioned by the personal nature of the locus of pressure. To be sure, social conformity is a difficult concept to measure without live interaction. An observational approach makes it difficult to untangle if or how social pressure independently affects behaviors given these variegated casual mechanisms, and whether changes in opinion that result from social interaction are due to compliance or private acceptance. Nevertheless, experiments provide one means to gain insight into how and why opinion change occurs. Here, we undertake an experiment to test the extent to which opinion change is due to persuasion through new information, social conformity pressure, or a combination of the two in a more realistic extended discussion environment.

Conformity and political behavior

Both observational and experimental research has addressed different aspects of the impact of socially-delivered information on individual behavior. Observational analyses of social networks form the backbone of much of the recent research on social influence and political behavior. Sinclair [ 22 ], for instance, demonstrates that citizen networks convey a bounded set of political information. Individuals may turn to highly informed peers [ 23 ] or aggregate information from trusted friends and family [ 24 ] in order to reduce the cost of gathering the information required to engage in political behavior (e.g., voting). In turning to their network, they are open to privately accepting this useful information. Political information, however, is not the only type of information transmitted through personal networks. Social pressure helps the network induce compliance with desired social norms [ 25 – 27 ]. In this case, members of the network provide information regarding the group’s expectations for appropriate engagement in politics. Individuals that are concerned about whether or not the group will continue to accept them therefore conform out of a desire to be liked, broadly defined. Norms are often self-enforcing, with merely the perceived threat of potential sanctions being enough to regulate behavior through compliance and self-sanctioning [ 28 , 29 ].

The debate over the practicality and reality of deliberative democracy further highlights the importance of understanding the role of political conformity in public and elite discourse. Scholars and theorists argue that political decisions are improved and legitimized under a deliberative process [ 30 – 34 ], even though deliberation does not necessarily result in consensus [ 35 ]. The crux of democratic deliberation is that participants are engaging in a rational discussion of a political topic, which provides the opportunity for each to learn from the others and thus privately update their preferences (i.e., out of a desire to be right). It results in a collectively rational enterprise that allows groups to overcome the bounded rationality of individuals that would otherwise yield suboptimal decisions [ 36 ]. This requires participants to fully engage and freely share the information that they have with the group.

Hibbing and Theiss-Morse [ 37 ], however, raise important questions about the desirability of deliberation among the public. Using focus groups, they find that citizens more often than not wish to disengage from discussion when they face opposition to their opinions. Instead, they appear averse to participation in politics and instead desire a “stealth democracy,” whereby democratic procedures exist, but are not always visible. In this view, deliberative environments do not ensure the optimal outcome, and can even result in suboptimal outcomes. In fact, the authors point directly to the issue of intra-group conformity due to compliance as a culprit for this phenomenon. The coercive influence of social pressure during deliberation has been further identified in jury deliberations [ 38 , 39 ] and other small group settings [ 40 ].

Beyond politics, there is experimental evidence of the propensity to conform out of a desire to either be liked or to be right [ 25 , 41 – 45 ]. Using a simple focus group format and pictures of lines, Asch [ 1 , 2 ] demonstrated that individuals would comply with the beliefs of their peers due to a desire to be accepted by the group, even if they disagree and even when they believe the group opinion does not match reality. To do this, Asch asked eight members of a group to evaluate two sets of lines. The lines were clearly either identical or different and group members were asked to identify whether there was a difference. Unknown to the participant, the seven other group members were confederates trained to act in concert. At a given point in the study, the confederates began choosing the wrong answer to the question of whether the lines were equal. Consequently, the participant faced social pressure from a unified group every time they selected their answer. Asch varied the behavior of the group, including the number of members and number of dissenting confederates. Participants often exhibited stress and many eventually complied with the group consensus, even though the group was objectively wrong and participants did not agree with them privately.

Using a much more complex and context-laden format—a youth summer camp with real campers—Sherif et al. [ 3 ] demonstrated private acceptance whereby humans internalize and conform to group norms because consensus suggests that they may have converged on a right answer. In this case, the boys in the camp quickly coalesced into competing factions and initial outliers in the groups conformed out of a desire to win competitions (i.e., be right). While the groundbreaking Robbers Cave experiments revealed a great deal about group behavior well beyond conformity, we focus specifically on this particular aspect of the findings, which have stood the test of time in numerous replications and extensions across a wide variety of social domains [ 46 – 52 ].

Replication of Asch’s experimental work, in particular, has met varying degrees success. Lalancette and Standing [ 53 ]found that Asch’s results were mixed when using a prompt more ambiguous than unequal lines. Further, Hock [ 54 ] critiques the Asch design for not replicating a real life situation. Focusing on divorce attitudes, Kenneth Hardy provided an early application of Asch’s public compliance and Sherif’s private acceptance theories to political opinions using a similar small-group format with six confederates and one participant. Confederates offered not only their opinions, but also reasons for their opinions, which provided a methodological innovation by introducing more information than just the confederates’ votes. Hardy’s work provided an important starting point for identifying the process of conformity in the political realm, but it remains limited. He only utilized men in his study and did not allow for repeated discussion to assess how long participants hold up to conformity pressure. In a more recent study, Levitan and Verhulst [ 55 ]found persistence in political attitude change after interaction with a unanimously-opposing group, but they did not incorporate any discussion.

Our experiment builds on these works by examining the micro-process underlying opinion change for a politically charged topic discussed in a real context. We bridge between studies that allow for no discussion with those that study day-long deliberations in order to determine if group influence has a stronger effect, even when the discussion centers on an attitude closely tied with social identity. Our interaction of about an hour simulates a likely real-world example of dialogue. More importantly, our design allows us to speak to the debate over social influence by pulling apart the desires to be right (private acceptance) and liked (compliance). Our main goal is not to completely predict the general public’s behavior, but rather to identify the independent causal role of social pressure on opinion change, given the known import of information effects. We expect conformity pressure and information to have joint and independent effects on opinion change.

Variation in conformity behavior

While our primary interest is in identifying the average effects of information and conformity pressure on opinion change, we nevertheless recognize that there is variation in humans’ responses to social pressure, depending on observed and unobserved individual characteristics. Thus the average treatment effect recovered can mask substantively important heterogeneity [ 56 , 57 ]. For instance, not all of Asch’s or Hardy’s subjects complied with group opinion and there was a great deal of variation in how willing Sherif et al.’s campers coalesced into cohesive and functioning groups. In order to address this possibility we test three factors that have been previously identified as covarying with the average propensity to conform: personality traits, self-esteem, and ideology. The most consistent evidence points towards those who change their opinions as being generally more agreeable, neurotic, and having lower self-esteem [ 58 ].

Generating hypotheses regarding the import of other personality and ideological dispositions on opinion change for political, moral and identity-laden topics is more complicated. Extant research indicates support for both stability and change for these traits and differs in the source of that change, i.e., whether it is informational or social. For example, on the one hand we might expect those who are more politically conservative to be more likely to conform to the group overtly, given extant studies showing conservatives think less negatively toward conformity and comply more often to group pressure and norms [ 59 – 61 ]. In addition, conservatives are also higher on the Conscientiousness personality trait, and this trait both reflects and is related to more conformist behavior [ 62 – 64 ].

On the other hand, conservatism, by definition, advocates the status quo and is related to resistance to change and greater refusal to privately accept new information, specifically if that information contradicts one’s values [ 65 , 66 ], leading to a greater likelihood of internal stability. In a similar manner, those high in openness and more politically liberal, while more likely to take in new information, and thus possibly more likely to privately accept it, are also less prone to restrictive conformity, and thus possibly less likely to conform publicly [ 67 ]. We treat these propositions as secondary hypotheses, and explore their import in a limited manner given restrictions in the data.

Materials and methods

In order to explicate the independent and joint effects of compliance and private acceptance, we designed an experiment, conducted at the Pennsylvania State University from May to December of 2013, which placed participants in a deliberative environment where they faced unified opposition to their expressed opinion on a political topic that is relevant to their local community. We assessed participants’ privately-held opinions, absent the group, before and after the treatment in order to determine whether those who expressed a change in opinion during the discussion only did so verbally in order to comply with the group and gain acceptance or if they privately accepted the group’s opinion and truly updated their own values. The group discussed the topic openly, for approximately 30–45 minutes, also allowing us to assess participant behavior throughout the discussion. We discuss the specifics in more detail below.

In designing the experiment, we leveraged a unique time in Penn State’s history, the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal and the firing of longtime Head Coach Joe Paterno. The firing provided an ideal topic of discussion and a hard test of conformity pressure given the fact that it exhibited high salience on campus, was politically charged, and connected to the participants’ identities as Penn State students. The question posed to our participants was whether or not they felt that Coach Paterno should have been fired by the University’s Board of Trustees in November 2011. Previous research demonstrates that undergraduates may not have as clearly defined political attitudes as older adults on many topics and thus may be more susceptible to conformity pressure from peers due to non-attitudes [ 68 ]. This informed our choice of the discussion topic, as Paterno’s role in the abuse was not only highly salient on the Penn State campus, but typically invoked strong and diametrically opposed opinions in the undergraduate population and the general Penn state community. We begin by providing some background on this issue and its connection to identity and politics.

Firing of Penn State football Head Coach Joe Paterno

The first week of November 2011 was a whirlwind for students at Penn State. Police arrested former defensive coach Jerry Sandusky on charges of child sexual abuse following the release of a grand jury report by the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General. In the midst of a national media firestorm and with evidence mounting that the University President, Athletic Director and Head football Coach had been aware of Sandusky’s activities, Penn State President Graham Spanier resigned and the Board of Trustees relieved Paterno of his duties. They also placed the Athletic Director, Tim Curley, and Vice President, Gary Schultz, on administrative leave after being indicted for perjury regarding their testimony about their knowledge of Sandusky’s sexual assaults of young boys. Immediately after the firings and suspensions, students poured into campus and downtown State College, causing damage and flipping a news van [ 69 ]. Various student protests persisted for weeks. The following summer brought Sandusky’s conviction, but controversy has not subsided, especially in Pennsylvania. The firing is continually alive at Penn State, as lawsuits against the university and the trials of Spanier, Curley, and Shultz continue to progress as Paterno’s family and supporters seek to restore his legacy.

While the real-life context of our design adds to its external validity, the discussion topic’s high salience and likelihood of evoking a strong opinion also improves the internal validity of the experiment. Paterno was more than an employee; he was the image of Penn State, “an extension of [the students’ and alumni’s] collective self” ([ 70 ], 154), and thus tied to students’ identities as members of the community [ 71 ]. As reported at the time of the scandal:

“More than any other man, Mr. Paterno is Penn State–the man who brought the institution national recognition… Paterno is at the core of the university’s sense of identity.” [ 72 ].

Given the emotion surrounding this issue, it is not unlike morality policies that evoke strong responses from individuals [ 73 ], thereby providing a hard test of conformity pressure on value- and identity-laden opinions. There is no better example of this than the ongoing pursuit of justice by the children subjected to abuse by Catholic priests and the mounting evidence of systematic concealment and enablement of such abuse by the Catholic Church. The similarities between Penn State and the Church persist on nearly every level, including the scandals threatening an important aspect of its members’ identities. In this way, the experience of students following the child abuse scandal at Penn State generalizes to politically relevant circumstances where organizational power and personal identities are challenged.

In addition to being a highly salient and identity-laden topic of discussion, the Paterno firing is a social and political issue. It weighed heavily on the 2012 Board of Trustees elections, when many candidates campaigned on their support for Paterno. Furthermore, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett was a de facto member of the Board and originally launched the Sandusky investigation while serving as the state Attorney General. As a board member, Corbett advocated for Paterno’s firing and faced both praise and criticism across the Commonwealth. As a result of the scandal, Pennsylvania passed legislation that clarifies responsibilities for reporting child abuse and heightens penalties for failures to report. The abuse received national recognition. When asked for his reaction to the firing, President Obama called on Americans to search their souls and to take responsibility for protecting children [ 74 ]. Thus, there is recognition by elites, the public, the media, and the academy that Paterno’s firing is an inherently political issue. Furthermore, the topic has personal importance to the participants, is identity laden, and relevant at the local, state, and national-levels. Having described the context of the topic of discussion, we now turn to describing the experimental protocol.

Participant recruitment

The experiment was advertised as a study on political discussion in upper- and lower-level social science courses, as well as through campus fliers and a university research website. As an incentive, participants were entered into a raffle for one of eight $25 gift cards to Amazon. The first participants completed the study in May 2013 and data collection closed in December 2013. There were no major developments in the Sandusky scandal during our data collection phase, thus we believe that no outside events threaten the validity of the study. The firing of the four university officials, Joe Paterno’s death, Jerry Sandusky’s conviction, issuance of the Freeh Report, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s sanctions all occurred prior to the start of data collection. This study was approved by the Pennsylvania State University Office for Research Protections Institutional Review Board (Study# 41536) on February 20, 2013. All participants in the treatment group signed a written informed consent form prior to participating in the study. Participants in the control group supplied implied consent by completing the online survey after reading an informed consent document on the first web page of the survey. Penn State’s IRB approved both methods of consent. Consent materials can be found with other study reproduction materials at the corresponding author’s dataverse ( http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YVCPDT ). Thus, all participants provided informed consent and all procedures contributing to this work complied with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975.

A total of 58 students participated in either the treatment or control groups. Compared to observational studies, this may appear a small number, but it comports with current research norms that require high participant involvement and a substantial amount of their time [ 75 , 76 ] and is consistent with the sample sizes for the foundational work in this area [ 2 , 6 ]. The pre- and post-test, discussion session and debriefing required at least 1.5 hours of each participant’s time. Researchers spent, on average, at least eight hours per participant recruiting, coordinating, and scheduling discussion groups, running discussion sessions, and coding behavioral data. The study generally targeted current undergraduates, but three graduate students and one recent graduate also participated. Upon volunteering to take part in the study, participants were randomly assigned to either the treatment (n = 34) or control (n = 24) group using a coin flip. The total sample includes an un-randomized 16 person pilot of the experimental protocol. See S3 File for additional information on this pilot group, its characteristics, and analyses showing their inclusion does not affect the main findings.

Pre-test survey

Fig 1 presents the study design including information provided to the treatment and control groups (in black) and the points at which we measured their opinion regarding Paterno’s firing (in red). Both groups were administrated a pre-test survey using Qualtrics. The treated group completed this survey before attending a discussion session. In addition to basic demographic characteristics, we collected a number of psychological and behavioral traits for every participant. Ideology was measured by an attitudinal measurement of ideology, a Liberalism-Conservatism scale [ 77 ] widely used to prevent measurement error that arises from the difficulty in accurately collapsing a complex view of politics into a single dimension. This measure of ideology is well validated (e.g., Bouchard et al. 2003) and serves as the basis for modern definitions of ideology across disciplines [ 78 , 79 ]. The measure relies on respondents simply agreeing or disagreeing with a broad range of political and social topics, from evolution to taxes. In this case, we used 48 different topics, which generate an additive scale of conservatism ranging from 0 (very low) to 48 (very high). In addition to measuring our participant’s political ideology, we assessed their self-esteem using Rosenberg’s [ 80 ] scale and personality using McCrae and John’s [ 81 ] 44-question Big 5 dimensions of personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

This figure presents each phase of the study, including information provided to treated and control groups (in black) and the points at which we measured their opinion of the Paterno firing (in red).

Finally, all participants were asked their opinion on five policies that affect undergraduates at Penn State: alcohol possession on campus; government oversight of academic performance; the firing of Paterno; prevention of State Patty’s Day celebrations; and use of the student activities fee. Participants recorded their opinion using a five-point Likert scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” We included five different topics on the survey so that treatment group participants would be unsure as to which topic they would be discussing.

Discussion group

After completion of the online survey, participants in the treatment group were scheduled individually for a discussion session. Each discussion group was comprised of a single participant and two to four trained confederates (we compare differences in the number of experimenters and find no effects; for more information see S4 File ). A total of five unique confederates, three females and two males, were used across the length of the study. Among them were four political science Ph.D. candidates of varying experience and one recent graduate who majored in political science. The confederates looked young and dressed informally, and were not distinguishable from our undergraduate students. In terms of training, the confederates were not strictly scripted so that the discussion would not appear forced or scripted. Instead, the experimenter and other volunteers took part in pre-experiment tests as mock participants so that the confederates could argue both sides of the Paterno firing and develop the consistent points they used for the duration of the study (see S2 File ). Fig 2 shows a typical discussion session. Discussion sessions were held in a conference room with all of the group members sitting around a table. There was no fixed seating arrangement.

Clockwise from bottom left: Experimenter, confederate, confederate, participant, and confederate. Note the participant’s seemingly disengaged body language. This participant ultimately changed their opinion.

At the beginning of each discussion session, the experimenter reminded the group that the general purpose of the experiment is to understand political decision-making and how individuals form political opinions. They were told that a topic was randomly selected for each discussion group from the five included in the pre-test survey, with their topic being the firing of Paterno. Prior to the start of open discussion, group members were provided a sheet of excerpts from the Freeh Report [ 82 ] regarding Paterno’s involvement in the Sandusky scandal at Penn State (see S1 File ). They were told that the information was drawn from independent investigations and was meant to refresh their memories, given that two years had passed since the firing.

After providing time to read the information sheet, the group was polled verbally regarding whether or not they believed Paterno should have been fired (yes or no). The participant was always asked to answer first. This allowed the confederates to subsequently express the opposite opinion throughout the discussion. Though very little time passed between completion of the pre-test surveys and participation in the discussion groups, we did not rely on the opinions expressed in the pre-test surveys as the basis of our confederates’ opinion. We recorded and used the verbal response as the respondents’ opinion. This also ensures that our confederates were responding to the precise opinion held by the participant at the start of the discussion session. This way we could track the effect of conformity pressure on their opinion throughout the session.

The group was then provided 30 minutes for open discussion; however, discussion was allowed to go beyond 30 minutes in order allow participants to finish any thoughts and reflect a more natural interaction. During this discussion, up to four confederates argued the opposition position to greater or lesser degrees depending on the confederate, including responding to and interacting with the participant and even agreeing with the participant on certain points. At the conclusion of the discussion time, group members were told that researchers wished to understand their true opinion at that moment and that we would be aggregating the individual opinions from our groups in order to gain a sense of overall student opinion on each of the five topics. Thus, they were instructed to complete an anonymous ballot with their final opinion. The anonymous ballot allowed us to measure whether their opinion had actually changed during the discussion, conforming to other people’s behavior due to private acceptance that what they are saying is right, or were only publicly complying with other people’s behavior, without necessarily believing in what they are doing or saying.

Each discussion session was video recorded for the purposes of coding both verbal and non-verbal indications of their opinion. Two coders were hired to review each discussion session video and record a series of behavioral characteristics of the participants (not reported in this paper) as well as their impression regarding whether the participants verbally changed their opinion during the course of the discussion (a binary yes/no). The principal investigators also coded each video. We used the modal code from all four coders, with the principal investigators re-reviewing the videos to break six ties. Fleiss’s Kappa [ 83 ] indicates moderate agreement among raters on the verbally expressed opinion (0.54, p < 0.001).

The combination of anonymous balloting and video recording for verbal cues is an important aspect of the study design that allows us to pull apart whether participants conformed out of a desire to be right, liked, or a combination of the two. Finally, we debriefed each participant to explain the full purpose of the study, including any and all possible points of deception, and to gather information about their personal feelings on being in the minority during the discussion.

Control group

We utilized a control group in order to identify the independent effect of social pressure on opinion change. Their behavior established a baseline expectation for the amount of opinion change we could expect with just the introduction of new information and no interpersonal interaction. This baseline then allows us to compare the two groups, social influence treatment and control, in order to tease apart the independent and joint effects of social conformity pressure and information on opinion change.

To this end, the control group took the same pre-test survey as the treatment group. However, after completion of the survey, instead of being in a deliberative session, control group participants read additional information on a topic that was “randomly” selected from the five opinion questions. Based on their opinion regarding the firing of Paterno, we presented them with the same sheet of information provided to the treated as well as a summary of the same pro- and counter-arguments used by the actual confederates during the discussion group sessions (see S1 and S2 Files). After reading these, control group participants were asked whether they believe Paterno should have been fired (yes or no) and the strength of that opinion (very strongly, somewhat strongly, neutral). If they changed their opinion at this juncture, we consider they did so only because of the introduction of new information, as there was an absence of social pressure. Thus, our design allows us to parse out the effect of the discussion group and the social pressure emerging from an unanimity of opinion opposite to the participants.

Results and discussion

The core finding of this study revolves around the question to what extent will people conform to an opposing opinion on a topic that is salient, politically charged, and informs some aspect of their identity? Furthermore, can we evoke deviation rates similar to the foundational studies that relied on less complex aspects of one’s psychology [ 1 ]? And most important, what type of change is occurring? For those participants who changed their opinions, was it due to new information (i.e., private acceptance), social pressure (i.e., public compliance), or some combination of the two? To answer these questions, we first examined the degree of opinion change in both the treatment and control groups. For the control group, we compared their initial opinion from the pre-test survey with the opinion they provided after reading the information sheet and counter-arguments. Fig 3 displays the percentage of each group that did and did not change their opinion. Within the control group, which received the same information as the discussion group, but had no social interaction, only 8 percent of the participants changed their opinion. The information-based change we observed is consistent with extant research [ 84 , 85 ]. In addition, though a large proportion of the control group did not change their opinion, some did moderate it (i.e., strengthened or weakened) based on the receipt of new information alone. See S5 File for a further breakdown of these changes.

Turning to the treatment group, 38 percent of our treated participants changed their opinion between the initial vote (after receiving information and prior to the discussion) and the final secret ballot. Our complex, identity, and value-laden topic returned findings that comport remarkably close to the deviation rates of Asch [ 2 ] and those that follow (for a meta-analysis, see [ 6 ]). If we consider all other things equal, the 30 percent increase in opinion change is dependent on the treatment of participating in the group discussion (χ 2 = 5.094, p < 0.05). This finding remains unchanged if the 16 non-randomized members of the pilot study are removed from the treatment group (though the p-value of the chi-square declines to 0.10, due to the smaller n, see S3 File ). As further evidence, Table 1 presents logistic regression results demonstrating the treatment effect. Namely, being in the treatment condition increases the odds of opinion change by 581 percent. Meaning, social pressure and/or the personal delivery of information, as opposed to simple exposure to new information, had a profound influence on either true opinion change through private acceptance or conformity through public compliance. Due to the small sample size, we are hesitant to include additional covariates in this model, but instead use t-tests below to examine differences in the characteristics of participants who changed their opinion and those who did not.

* p < 0.05; standard errors in parentheses and 95% confidence intervals in brackets

Sources of change

Moving to our secondary analyses, the research design also allowed us to parse out the specific sources of change within the treatment group. Recall we accounted for both true opinion change (i.e., the anonymous ballot at the end of discussion) and verbal opinion change (i.e., declared opinion change during group discussion captured in video and coded by independent raters) for those in the treatment condition. Therefore, we divided those in the treatment group into four subgroups in order to better understand why they changed their opinion. Table 2 shows the percentages of participants in the treatment group who changed their opinion overtly, covertly, or not at all. In sum, 47 percent did not change their opinion between the start and end of the discussion session. A total of 33 percent changed both overtly and covertly, meaning they verbally expressed an opinion change and wrote a changed opinion on their secret ballot. We argue that this group responded to a combination of the desires to be right and liked. Of the remaining participants, 10 percent changed due to a desire to be liked (overtly, but not covertly) and 10 percent due to a desire to be right (covertly, but not overtly). Though only anecdotal, one of the participants in the desire to be right category went so far as to tell the experimenter that he agreed with the group but adamantly refused to agree openly. Such participants were swayed by the introduction of new information out of a strong desire to be right, but apparently did not want to look like they were changing their opinion. Thus, our first set of analyses confirms that information plays an important role in opinion change, but social pressure also has a substantive and, at least in this context, a larger effect. For even a topic so important to one’s identity, participants changed their previously held opinions.

N = 34, only includes treatment group

Psychological differences

Having established the main findings of our study and the relative import of the two causal mechanisms for why participants changed their opinion, we now turn to examining how underlying traits, including ideology, personality, age and sex, differ between those that changed their opinion and those that did not. Demographic differences are included for descriptive purposes. First, we assessed differences between pro- and anti-firing participants. Second, we examined the relationship between direction of opinion change and trait differences between participants that changed their opinion and those that held firm. Due the nature of the experiment and specific focus on the question of causality, these tests are secondary to the main findings in the paper. For the following analyses, the sample sizes are small and in some cases and the findings only speculative.

Across both the treatment and control groups, the pre-test survey showed almost two-to-one support for Paterno keeping his job (i.e., against the firing). As mentioned earlier, “JoePa” was not only a symbol of Penn State, but also an icon to its students, and to some degree seen as a reflection of them. Table 3 displays the average demographic and psychological measures for those for and against the firing, based on the pre-test survey. The only statistically significant difference between the groups is their political ideology. The group opposed to Paterno’s firing is, on average, more conservative in their attitude positions than those that called for his firing. It is important to note that these are college students, and thus the overall distribution of ideology exhibits a liberal skew. However, Fig 4 demonstrates that the pro-firing group is not only less conservative, on average, but is also more ideologically narrow, whereas those that did not support the firing are more conservative, but also drawn from a wider ideological span. This finding suggests that ideology is a substantial factor for individuals that supported the firing. Whereas support for Paterno may have a less pronounced ideological dimension, those supporting his firing may focus more narrowly on the issue of child abuse and the responsibility of those in leadership to protect vulnerable citizens. Given that ideology is the only difference we could identify among participants’ opinions prior to the start of the experiment, we next examined whether there were differences between participants who changed their opinion and those that did not in both the treatment and control conditions.

* entries indicate significant t-tests, p < 0.05.

† Difference in proportions test used for Male. These analyses have a smaller overall sample size due to removal of neutral pre-test votes.

Tables ​ Tables4 4 and ​ and5 5 provide a sense of how demographic and psychological characteristics differ between participants who changed their opinion and those who did not. Table 4 includes both treatment and control participants, whereas Table 5 focuses solely on the treatment group. We found evidence both supporting and refuting our hypotheses presented above. There were consistent significant differences ( p < 0.05) in conservatism and conscientiousness. Namely, participants who changed their opinion are less conservative and less conscientious. Given the reported relationships between these two traits, this finding makes sense. Additionally, when all subjects are pooled ( Table 4 ), there is also a significant difference in neuroticism, with opinion changers registering higher on this scale. Both suggest that political and psychological traits may play a role in the mean shift demonstrated above. There were no differences based on the number of confederates. Meaning, participants were no more or less effected by social pressures from greater (4) or fewer (2) opponents in the discussion environment. These results demonstrate that individual differences exist across individuals that change their opinion and those that do not. Additional research will be required to both confirm and expand upon these findings. What we do find, however, is in line with expectations derived from past research and points to useful areas of future inquiry.

† Difference in proportions test used for Male.

† Difference in proportions test used for Male. Smaller overall sample size due to using only treatment condition participants.

All participants were debriefed upon completion of the discussion and informed to all aspects of the study. Participants were asked during the debriefing how they felt about being the only dissenting voice. Forty-seven percent of the treatment group participants freely offered that they felt pressured or intimidated. Twenty-nine percent also freely said that they felt like they had to dig in and defend their position during the discussion. This included six people that ultimately changed their minds. One said, “I’m not getting any support in this room. Alright I’ll defend my own position.” Another said, “I feel extra pressure to explain myself.” For some, their defensiveness continued into the debriefing. In particular, some students that did not change their opinion continued defending themselves when talking one-on-one with the experimenter, even after it was explained no matter which position they took, they would face opposition. This demonstrates that some participants are put on the defensive when faced with a unified opposition. Of those that expressed feeling defensive, some dug-in deeply and did not budge at all, while others opened up to the influence of their peers as the discussion progressed. This behavior comports the foundational work of Asch [ 1 , 2 ] and Milgram [ 86 ] and strongly suggests that our participants indeed experienced social pressure in the treatment condition, but differs in that it highlights the variance in how individual’s react to such pressure.

Limitations

We wish to call attention to two specific limitations of this study that are discussed above and in the supplementary materials, but warrant further mention. The first limitation is the inclusion of a meaningful, relative to the overall sample size, non-randomized pilot of the treatment condition. While this had no substantive effect on the results, it is important to recognize and we discuss this in more detail in the S3 File . Second, Fig 1 makes apparent that we use two similar, but slightly different scales for opinion throughout the study. Namely, pre-test opinion is measured on a five-point Likert scale and the remaining opinion measures are dichotomous (yes/no), with an additional strength question for the control group. Our primary analyses, however, rely on the comparison of the two yes/no answers in the treatment group; the verbal designation of yes/no at the beginning of the discussion section and the yes/no in the post discussion ballot. We further discuss this in the S5 File .

Finally, to some the small sample size of the study may be a limitation, especially those concerned about a replication crisis in Social Psychology [ 87 ]. We would respond, however, that the intensive nature of this study in terms of researcher hours and treatment condition makes it difficult to scale-up. Thus, a multi-site replication is likely the best approach to assessing the veracity of these findings [ 88 , 89 ]. We encourage such replication and have provided all materials necessary on the corresponding author’s Dataverse ( http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YVCPDT ). Additional lessons relevant to replication work and laboratory experiments in political science can be found in Mallinson (2018) [ 90 ].

Conclusions

While researchers have examined the roles of social influence (public compliance) and new information (private acceptance) on opinion change, the two are less often examined concurrently and the explicit causal arrows are more often assumed than tested through an experiment. Furthermore, social conformity is a complex concept to measure through surveys or interviews alone. Live interaction provides an optimal means to understand social pressures. Our experiment was designed specifically to further unpack the causal mechanisms underlying opinion change and test whether a person’s values and identity are subject to social pressure. Furthermore, the selection of the topic of study, the firing of an important symbol of Penn State, also allowed us to explicate the extent to which information and social pressure challenge a person’s deeply held values and identity. We find that while information has an important role in changing people’s opinions on a highly salient topic that is attached to a group identity, the social delivery of that information plays a large and independent role. Most individuals that changed their opinion did so out of some combination of the two forces, but there were people who only changed their opinion overtly in order to gain social acceptance as well as those who did not want to give the appearance of changing their mind, but still wanted to be right.

These findings have important implications for research on social and political behavior. They reinforce the understanding that citizens and elites cannot be simply viewed as rational utility maximizers independent of group dynamics. Yet, at the same time, the desire to be right and information remain critical components of opinion change. Furthermore, there are important individual differences such as ideology, self-esteem, and personality that appear to have a role in conformity. Exposure to politics and political discussion are fundamentally social, and therefore behavior is conditioned on the combination of the information one receives, and the social influence of the person or group providing that information interacting with one’s disposition. All should be considered when examining any inter-personal, social or political outcome. Be it a deliberative setting like a jury or a town hall meeting or informal gatherings of citizens, or political elites for that matter, changes in behavior are not simply due to rational information-driven updating, and even when they are, that updating may be pushed by the social forces that we experience in our interactions with other humans in variegated ways dependent upon the characteristics of the individual (for example, see [ 91 ]). This was the case for simple and objective stimuli, like Asch’s lines, and it is also the case in our context-laden experiment that focuses on the complexities of personal identity and opinion. That is, the conformity of social and political values relies on the same psychological mechanisms underlying general conformity.

Beyond theoretical and empirical importance for the study of social and political behavior, these findings also hold normative importance for democratic society. The normative implications are perhaps best exemplified by the organizational and personal turmoil that followed the revelation of child abuse by priests in the Catholic Church. Politics forms important aspects of the social and personal identities of elites and citizens, more so today than ever before [ 92 , 93 ]. People include their political party, positions on particular issues (e.g., environmentalism), and membership in political, religious, social and academic organizations, among other things, as key aspects of their identities. Our experiment helps us better understand how individuals behave when part of that identity is challenged.

That being said, no design is perfect, and this experiment only unpacks part of the causal mechanism. Like the early work on social conformity, it serves as a foundation for future studies to extend upon and further explicate the causal mechanism. For example, an extension on this design, such as controlling variation in the type and number of confederates [ 44 , 94 ], could help us better understand the nature and amount of pressure necessary to induce conformity across a variety of individual characteristics. For example, a potentially fruitful avenue of extension would be to provide the participant with one supportive confederate who verbally changes their opinion during the discussion. Having support reduces conformity pressure, but deviation by that support should increase it. Additionally, while we identify individuals whose behavior was prompted by either social pressure or information, the largest group responded to a combination of the two. Further parsing out the interaction between information, persuasion, pressure and the complexity of human dynamics will require an even more complex research design on a larger scale. The numerous extensions of Asch’s original experiment demonstrate the wealth of potential extensions of this design that can help unpack this black box. Doing so requires an incremental approach that will be time and resource intensive. This study provides the foundation for those next steps.

Supporting information

Acknowledgments.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2013 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, and the April 2014 Center for American Political Responsiveness Brown Bag in State College, Pennsylvania. We would like to thank the editor, the anonymous reviewer, Ralf Kurvers, Rose McDermott, and conference attendees for their helpful comments and suggestions on this manuscript. We are also grateful to Ralf Kurvers for providing Fig 1 . We would like to thank our research assistants, Ronald Festa, Emilly Flynn, Christina Grier, Christopher Ojeda, Kimberly Seufer, and Matthew Wilson, that helped make this experimental protocol a success.

Funding Statement

This project was supported by a $1,000 internal grant from the Penn State Department of Political Science (awarded to DJM). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Data Availability

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)

Reference this article:

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15 Social Psychology

Conformity, compliance, and obedience, learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain the Asch effect
• Define conformity and types of social influence
• Describe Stanley Milgram’s experiment and its implications
• Define groupthink, social facilitation, and social loafing

In this section, we discuss additional ways in which people influence others. The topics of conformity, social influence, obedience, and group processes demonstrate the power of the social situation to change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. We begin this section with a discussion of a famous social psychology experiment that demonstrated how susceptible humans are to outside social pressures.

Solomon Asch conducted several experiments in the 1950s to determine how people are affected by the thoughts and behaviors of other people. In one study, a group of participants was shown a series of printed line segments of different lengths: a, b, and c ( [link] ). Participants were then shown a fourth line segment: x. They were asked to identify which line segment from the first group (a, b, or c) most closely resembled the fourth line segment in length.

These line segments illustrate the judgment task in Asch’s conformity study. Which line on the right—a, b, or c—is the same length as line x on the left?

Each group of participants had only one true, naïve subject. The remaining members of the group were confederates of the researcher. A confederate is a person who is aware of the experiment and works for the researcher. Confederates are used to manipulate social situations as part of the research design, and the true, naïve participants believe that confederates are, like them, uninformed participants in the experiment. In Asch’s study, the confederates identified a line segment that was obviously shorter than the target line—a wrong answer. The naïve participant then had to identify aloud the line segment that best matched the target line segment.

How often do you think the true participant aligned with the confederates’ response? That is, how often do you think the group influenced the participant, and the participant gave the wrong answer? Asch (1955) found that 76% of participants conformed to group pressure at least once by indicating the incorrect line. Conformity is the change in a person’s behavior to go along with the group, even if he does not agree with the group. Why would people give the wrong answer? What factors would increase or decrease someone giving in or conforming to group pressure?

The Asch effect is the influence of the group majority on an individual’s judgment.

What factors make a person more likely to yield to group pressure? Research shows that the size of the majority, the presence of another dissenter, and the public or relatively private nature of responses are key influences on conformity.

• The size of the majority: The greater the number of people in the majority, the more likely an individual will conform. There is, however, an upper limit: a point where adding more members does not increase conformity. In Asch’s study, conformity increased with the number of people in the majority—up to seven individuals. At numbers beyond seven, conformity leveled off and decreased slightly (Asch, 1955).
• The presence of another dissenter: If there is at least one dissenter, conformity rates drop to near zero (Asch, 1955).
• The public or private nature of the responses: When responses are made publicly (in front of others), conformity is more likely; however, when responses are made privately (e.g., writing down the response), conformity is less likely (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955).

The finding that conformity is more likely to occur when responses are public than when they are private is the reason government elections require voting in secret, so we are not coerced by others ( [link] ). The Asch effect can be easily seen in children when they have to publicly vote for something. For example, if the teacher asks whether the children would rather have extra recess, no homework, or candy, once a few children vote, the rest will comply and go with the majority. In a different classroom, the majority might vote differently, and most of the children would comply with that majority. When someone’s vote changes if it is made in public versus private, this is known as compliance. Compliance can be a form of conformity. Compliance is going along with a request or demand, even if you do not agree with the request. In Asch’s studies, the participants complied by giving the wrong answers, but privately did not accept that the obvious wrong answers were correct.

Voting for government officials in the United States is private to reduce the pressure of conformity. (credit: Nicole Klauss)

Now that you have learned about the Asch line experiments, why do you think the participants conformed? The correct answer to the line segment question was obvious, and it was an easy task. Researchers have categorized the motivation to conform into two types: normative social influence and informational social influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955).

In normative social influence , people conform to the group norm to fit in, to feel good, and to be accepted by the group. However, with informational social influence , people conform because they believe the group is competent and has the correct information, particularly when the task or situation is ambiguous. What type of social influence was operating in the Asch conformity studies? Since the line judgment task was unambiguous, participants did not need to rely on the group for information. Instead, participants complied to fit in and avoid ridicule, an instance of normative social influence.

An example of informational social influence may be what to do in an emergency situation. Imagine that you are in a movie theater watching a film and what seems to be smoke comes in the theater from under the emergency exit door. You are not certain that it is smoke—it might be a special effect for the movie, such as a fog machine. When you are uncertain you will tend to look at the behavior of others in the theater. If other people show concern and get up to leave, you are likely to do the same. However, if others seem unconcerned, you are likely to stay put and continue watching the movie ( [link] ).

People in crowds tend to take cues from others and act accordingly. (a) An audience is listening to a lecture and people are relatively quiet, still, and attentive to the speaker on the stage. (b) An audience is at a rock concert where people are dancing, singing, and possibly engaging in activities like crowd surfing. (credit a: modification of work by Matt Brown; credit b: modification of work by Christian Holmér)

How would you have behaved if you were a participant in Asch’s study? Many students say they would not conform, that the study is outdated, and that people nowadays are more independent. To some extent this may be true. Research suggests that overall rates of conformity may have reduced since the time of Asch’s research. Furthermore, efforts to replicate Asch’s study have made it clear that many factors determine how likely it is that someone will demonstrate conformity to the group. These factors include the participant’s age, gender, and socio-cultural background (Bond & Smith, 1996; Larsen, 1990; Walker & Andrade, 1996).

Link to Learning

Watch this video to see a replication of the Asch experiment.

STANLEY MILGRAM’S EXPERIMENT

Conformity is one effect of the influence of others on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Another form of social influence is obedience to authority. Obedience is the change of an individual’s behavior to comply with a demand by an authority figure. People often comply with the request because they are concerned about a consequence if they do not comply. To demonstrate this phenomenon, we review another classic social psychology experiment.

Stanley Milgram was a social psychology professor at Yale who was influenced by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal. Eichmann’s defense for the atrocities he committed was that he was “just following orders.” Milgram (1963) wanted to test the validity of this defense, so he designed an experiment and initially recruited 40 men for his experiment. The volunteer participants were led to believe that they were participating in a study to improve learning and memory. The participants were told that they were to teach other students (learners) correct answers to a series of test items. The participants were shown how to use a device that they were told delivered electric shocks of different intensities to the learners. The participants were told to shock the learners if they gave a wrong answer to a test item—that the shock would help them to learn. The participants gave (or believed they gave) the learners shocks, which increased in 15-volt increments, all the way up to 450 volts. The participants did not know that the learners were confederates and that the confederates did not actually receive shocks.

In response to a string of incorrect answers from the learners, the participants obediently and repeatedly shocked them. The confederate learners cried out for help, begged the participant teachers to stop, and even complained of heart trouble. Yet, when the researcher told the participant-teachers to continue the shock, 65% of the participants continued the shock to the maximum voltage and to the point that the learner became unresponsive ( [link] ). What makes someone obey authority to the point of potentially causing serious harm to another person?

The Milgram experiment showed the surprising degree to which people obey authority. Two out of three (65%) participants continued to administer shocks to an unresponsive learner.

Several variations of the original Milgram experiment were conducted to test the boundaries of obedience. When certain features of the situation were changed, participants were less likely to continue to deliver shocks (Milgram, 1965). For example, when the setting of the experiment was moved to an office building, the percentage of participants who delivered the highest shock dropped to 48%. When the learner was in the same room as the teacher, the highest shock rate dropped to 40%. When the teachers’ and learners’ hands were touching, the highest shock rate dropped to 30%. When the researcher gave the orders by phone, the rate dropped to 23%. These variations show that when the humanity of the person being shocked was increased, obedience decreased. Similarly, when the authority of the experimenter decreased, so did obedience.

This case is still very applicable today. What does a person do if an authority figure orders something done? What if the person believes it is incorrect, or worse, unethical? In a study by Martin and Bull (2008), midwives privately filled out a questionnaire regarding best practices and expectations in delivering a baby. Then, a more senior midwife and supervisor asked the junior midwives to do something they had previously stated they were opposed to. Most of the junior midwives were obedient to authority, going against their own beliefs.

When in group settings, we are often influenced by the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors around us. Whether it is due to normative or informational social influence, groups have power to influence individuals. Another phenomenon of group conformity is groupthink. Groupthink is the modification of the opinions of members of a group to align with what they believe is the group consensus (Janis, 1972). In group situations, the group often takes action that individuals would not perform outside the group setting because groups make more extreme decisions than individuals do. Moreover, groupthink can hinder opposing trains of thought. This elimination of diverse opinions contributes to faulty decision by the group.

There have been several instances of groupthink in the U.S. government. One example occurred when the United States led a small coalition of nations to invade Iraq in March 2003. This invasion occurred because a small group of advisors and former President George W. Bush were convinced that Iraq represented a significant terrorism threat with a large stockpile of weapons of mass destruction at its disposal. Although some of these individuals may have had some doubts about the credibility of the information available to them at the time, in the end, the group arrived at a consensus that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and represented a significant threat to national security. It later came to light that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, but not until the invasion was well underway. As a result, 6000 American soldiers were killed and many more civilians died. How did the Bush administration arrive at their conclusions? Here is a video of Colin Powell discussing the information he had, 10 years after his famous United Nations speech,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU6KMYlDyWc (“Colin Powell regrets,” 2011).

Do you see evidence of groupthink?

Why does groupthink occur? There are several causes of groupthink, which makes it preventable. When the group is highly cohesive, or has a strong sense of connection, maintaining group harmony may become more important to the group than making sound decisions. If the group leader is directive and makes his opinions known, this may discourage group members from disagreeing with the leader. If the group is isolated from hearing alternative or new viewpoints, groupthink may be more likely. How do you know when groupthink is occurring?

There are several symptoms of groupthink including the following:

• perceiving the group as invulnerable or invincible—believing it can do no wrong
• believing the group is morally correct
• self-censorship by group members, such as withholding information to avoid disrupting the group consensus
• the quashing of dissenting group members’ opinions
• the shielding of the group leader from dissenting views
• perceiving an illusion of unanimity among group members
• holding stereotypes or negative attitudes toward the out-group or others’ with differing viewpoints (Janis, 1972)

Given the causes and symptoms of groupthink, how can it be avoided? There are several strategies that can improve group decision making including seeking outside opinions, voting in private, having the leader withhold position statements until all group members have voiced their views, conducting research on all viewpoints, weighing the costs and benefits of all options, and developing a contingency plan (Janis, 1972; Mitchell & Eckstein, 2009).

GROUP POLARIZATION

Another phenomenon that occurs within group settings is group polarization. Group polarization (Teger & Pruitt, 1967) is the strengthening of an original group attitude after the discussion of views within a group. That is, if a group initially favors a viewpoint, after discussion the group consensus is likely a stronger endorsement of the viewpoint. Conversely, if the group was initially opposed to a viewpoint, group discussion would likely lead to stronger opposition. Group polarization explains many actions taken by groups that would not be undertaken by individuals. Group polarization can be observed at political conventions, when platforms of the party are supported by individuals who, when not in a group, would decline to support them. A more everyday example is a group’s discussion of how attractive someone is. Does your opinion change if you find someone attractive, but your friends do not agree? If your friends vociferously agree, might you then find this person even more attractive?

Social Facilitation

Not all intergroup interactions lead to the negative outcomes we have described. Sometimes being in a group situation can improve performance. Social facilitation occurs when an individual performs better when an audience is watching than when the individual performs the behavior alone. This typically occurs when people are performing a task for which they are skilled. Can you think of an example in which having an audience could improve performance? One common example is sports. Skilled basketball players will be more likely to make a free throw basket when surrounded by a cheering audience than when playing alone in the gym ( [link] ). However, there are instances when even skilled athletes can have difficulty under pressure. For example, if an athlete is less skilled or nervous about making a free throw, having an audience may actually hinder rather than help. In sum, social facilitation is likely to occur for easy tasks, or tasks at which we are skilled, but worse performance may occur when performing in front of others, depending on the task.

The attention of the crowd can motivate a skilled athlete. (credit: Tommy Gilligan/USMA)

Social Loafing

Another way in which a group presence can affect our performance is social loafing. Social loafing is the exertion of less effort by a person working together with a group. Social loafing occurs when our individual performance cannot be evaluated separately from the group. Thus, group performance declines on easy tasks (Karau & Williams, 1993). Essentially individual group members loaf and let other group members pick up the slack. Because each individual’s efforts cannot be evaluated, individuals become less motivated to perform well. For example, consider a group of people cooperating to clean litter from the roadside. Some people will exert a great amount of effort, while others will exert little effort. Yet the entire job gets done, and it may not be obvious who worked hard and who didn’t.

As a college student you may have experienced social loafing while working on a group project. Have you ever had to contribute more than your fair share because your fellow group members weren’t putting in the work? This may happen when a professor assigns a group grade instead of individual grades. If the professor doesn’t know how much effort each student contributed to a project, some students may be inclined to let more conscientious students do more of the work. The chance of social loafing in student work groups increases as the size of the group increases (Shepperd & Taylor, 1999).

Interestingly, the opposite of social loafing occurs when the task is complex and difficult (Bond & Titus, 1983; Geen, 1989). Remember the previous discussion of choking under pressure? This happens when you perform a difficult task and your individual performance can be evaluated. In a group setting, such as the student work group, if your individual performance cannot be evaluated, there is less pressure for you to do well, and thus less anxiety or physiological arousal (Latané, Williams, & Harkens, 1979). This puts you in a relaxed state in which you can perform your best, if you choose (Zajonc, 1965). If the task is a difficult one, many people feel motivated and believe that their group needs their input to do well on a challenging project (Jackson & Williams, 1985). Given what you learned about social loafing, what advice would you give a new professor about how to design group projects? If you suggested that individuals’ efforts should not be evaluated, to prevent the anxiety of choking under pressure, but that the task must be challenging, you have a good understanding of the concepts discussed in this section. Alternatively, you can suggest that individuals’ efforts should be evaluated, but the task should be easy so as to facilitate performance. Good luck trying to convince your professor to only assign easy projects.

The table below summarizes the types of social influence you have learned about in this chapter.

The power of the situation can lead people to conform, or go along with the group, even in the face of inaccurate information. Conformity to group norms is driven by two motivations, the desire to fit in and be liked and the desire to be accurate and gain information from the group. Authority figures also have influence over our behaviors, and many people become obedient and follow orders even if the orders are contrary to their personal values. Conformity to group pressures can also result in groupthink, or the faulty decision-making process that results from cohesive group members trying to maintain group harmony. Group situations can improve human behavior through facilitating performance on easy tasks, but inhibiting performance on difficult tasks. The presence of others can also lead to social loafing when individual efforts cannot be evaluated.

Self Check Questions

Critical thinking questions.

1. Describe how seeking outside opinions can prevent groupthink.

2. Compare and contrast social loafing and social facilitation.

Personal Application Questions

3. Conduct a conformity study the next time you are in an elevator. After you enter the elevator, stand with your back toward the door. See if others conform to your behavior. Watch this video for a candid camera demonstration of this phenomenon. Did your results turn out as expected?

4. Most students adamantly state that they would never have turned up the voltage in the Milligram experiment. Do you think you would have refused to shock the learner? Looking at your own past behavior, what evidence suggests that you would go along with the order to increase the voltage?

1. Outsiders can serve as a quality control by offering diverse views and views that may differ from the leader’s opinion. The outsider can also remove the illusion of invincibility by having the group’s action held up to outside scrutiny. An outsider may offer additional information and uncover information that group members withheld.

2. In social loafing individual performance cannot be evaluated; however, in social facilitation individual performance can be evaluated. Social loafing and social facilitation both occur for easy or well-known tasks and when individuals are relaxed.

• Psychology. Authored by : OpenStax College. Located at : http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:1/Psychology . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/.

SiOWfa16: Science in Our World: Certainty and Controversy

The course website and blog for the fall 2016 instance of penn state's sc200 course.

“Conformity Experiment”

Have you ever thought about standing the wrong way in the elevator, or laughing at a funeral; probably not, right? We’ll have you ever thought about why you don’t do those things? In sociology we talk about how we conform based on others around us; this means we are going to stand the way others stand in a particular setting, and have the same emotion as others have in a particular setting. Solomon Asch did many studies on people’s tendency to conform when they are in a large group and he found that even when the individual knows the group is wrong they still conform to the group’s behaviors.

2 thoughts on “ “Conformity Experiment” ”

Conformity has always struck me as a dangerous trait humans exhibit, especially with atrocities including the Holocaust and other pointless genocides part of our history. After researching conformity in further detail, SimplyPsycology defines conformity in multiple aspects, mainly separated by the reasons for conforming. Some change their behavior to impress a group, others legitimately accept others opinions cause it aligns with their values. Overall, it’s always important to think for yourself and establish your own opinions.

This reminds me of an experiment done in the 60’s or 70’s I believe where the scientist would sit in the room with the participant and he would instruct him to shock the person in the next room if they answered a question wrong, and the shocks would get progressively worse for each wrong question. Obviously no one was getting actually shocked but the participant thought he was shocking people. The point was to see how much people would obey an authority figure. I believe some of the people obeyed so much that they shocked the person all the way to death, or so they thought. This is just another example of how much of an effect others can have on us.

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