Asch's Conformity Study - The Line Experiment
Imagine sitting in a room where everyone gives the obviously wrong answer - would you stick to what you know is right? Conformity means changing your behaviour because of pressure from individuals or groups, and Asch wanted to test this in the most straightforward situation possible.
His experiment was brilliantly simple. 123 American male students thought they were taking part in a vision test, but they were actually the only real participant amongst actors (called confederates). Everyone had to match the length of a line to one of three comparison lines - dead easy, right?
Here's where it gets interesting: the confederates deliberately gave wrong answers on 12 out of 18 trials. The results were shocking - participants gave the wrong answer 36.8% of the time, even though the correct answer was obvious. While 25% never conformed at all, a massive 75% went along with the group at least once.
Think about it: If people conform to strangers about something this obvious, imagine how much we conform in our daily lives!
