Dr. Philip Zimbardo: Okay I wanna give you a test of your visually acuity.
Your sensitivity to differences in line lengths.
So I'm going to show you a standard, and then I'll show three comparison lines.
One is going to be bigger, one is going to be shorter,
and one is going to be the same size as the standard.
Your job is, tell me which line, A, B, or C, is the same as the standard.
Seems like a simple judgement, you always get it right.
But now, before you give your answer,
there are going to be a half dozen to ten other people, like you, in the room,
and they're going to give their answers first.
An amazing thing happens, one after another,
they say the line that you see as shorter, is the same as the standard.
Shorter, shorter, shorter, shorter they don't say shorter,
they just say B, B, B, and so forth.
Now it's your turn. You know B is the wrong answer.
But what do you say? In this study done by Solomon Asch,
classic study of group conformity. The majority of people gave in.
Gave in on most of the critical trials, to agree with, to say publicly,
that they agreed with the majority.
This study is one of the first classic studies
on the power of the group.
As long as there are three or more people who agree among themselves
that reality is not the way you see it,
in many cases, you give in to see the world in their way.
Let's look at that study.
Experiment Conductor: The experiment you will be taking
part in today involves the perception of lengths of lines.
As you can see here, I have a number of cards
and on each there are several lines.
Your task is a very simple one:
you are to look at the line on the left and determine which of the three lines
on the right is equal to it in length.
Alright, we'll proceed in this order, you will give your answers-
Narrator: Only one of the people in the group is a real subject,
the fifth person with a white tee-shirt.
The others are confederates of the experimenter,
and have been told to give wrong answers on some of the trials.
The experiment begins uneventfully as subjects give their judgements
Male Subjects: Two, two, two, two, two.
Three, three, three, three.
But on the third trial, something happens.
Two, two, two, uh two.
The subject denies the evidence of his own eyes and yields to group influence.
Asch found subjects went along with the group on 37% of the critical trials.
But he found through interviews that they went along with
the group for different reasons.
Male Subjects: One, one.
Male #1: They must be right, there are four of them and one of me.
One.
Narrator: This subject's yielding is based on a distortion of his judgement.
He genuinely believes that the group is correct.
Male Subjects: One. One. One. Two.
One. Two. Two. Two.
Male #1: I know they're wrong, but why should I make waves?
Narrator: In this case, the subject knows he is right,
but goes along to avoid the discomfort of disagreeing with the group.
Here, the distortion is at the level of his response.
Male Subjects: Two, Two, Two, Two.
Narrator: In the previous experiment, the naïve subject stood alone against the group.
In this variation, Asch gave the naïve subject a partner,
here seated in the third position, who also gives the correct response.
Male Subjects: One, one, two, one, um two.
Narrator: With a partner, yielding drops to only five percent
of the critical trials compared to 37% without a partner.
Although subjects report warmth and good feeling
toward the partner, they typically deny that he played
a role in their own independence.
The partnership variation shows that much of the power of the group came,
not merely from its numbers but from the unanimity of its opposition.
When that unanimity is punctured, the group's power is greatly reduced.
Sometimes we go along with the group because
what they say convinces us they are right.
This is called informational conformity.
But sometimes we conform because we are apprehensive
that the group will disapprove if we are deviant.
This is called normative conformity.
The strength of the normative factor is shown in another variation carried out by Asch.
In this variation, the subject is told that
because he had arrived late, he would have to write his answers.
Subjects in this private response experiment are exposed
to the same amount of misleading information as other subjects,
but they're immune from any possible criticism by the group.
Male Subjects: One, one, one-
Narrator: And this enormously reduces the pressure to conform.
Conformity drops by 2/3.
Asch's experiment is a classic.
It reveals how people will deny what they see,
and submit to group pressure.
It allows us not only to observe conformity,
but to study the conditions that increase or reduce its occurrence.