UncleBuck
Well-Known Member
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
Groups of eight male college students participated in a simple "perceptual" task. In reality, all but one of the participants were "confederates" (i.e., actors), and the true focus of the study was about how this subject would react to the confederates' behavior.
The confederates knew the true aim of the experiment, but were introduced to the subject as other participants. Each student viewed a card with a line on it, followed by another with three lines labeled "A", "B", and "C" (See accompanying figure). One of these lines was the same as that on the first card, and the other two lines were clearly longer or shorter (i.e., a near-100% rate of correct responding was expected). Each participant was then asked to say aloud which line matched the length of that on the first card. Before the experiment, all confederates were given detailed instructions on how they should respond to each trial (card presentation). They would always unanimously nominate one comparator, but on certain trials they would give the correct response and on others, an incorrect response. The group was seated such that the real participant always responded last.
Subjects completed 18 trials. On the first two trials, both the subject and the confederates gave the obvious, correct answer. On the third trial, the confederates would all give the same wrong answer. This wrong-responding recurred on 11 of the remaining 15 trials. It was subjects' behavior on these 12 "critical trials" that formed the aim of the study: to test how many subjects would change their answer to conform to those of the 7 confederates, despite it being wrong.
Results
In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, the error rate on the critical stimuli was less than 1%.[1]
In the confederate condition also, the majority of participants' responses remained correct (63.2 per cent), but a sizable minority of responses conformed to the confederate (incorrect) answer (36.8 percent).
Groups of eight male college students participated in a simple "perceptual" task. In reality, all but one of the participants were "confederates" (i.e., actors), and the true focus of the study was about how this subject would react to the confederates' behavior.
The confederates knew the true aim of the experiment, but were introduced to the subject as other participants. Each student viewed a card with a line on it, followed by another with three lines labeled "A", "B", and "C" (See accompanying figure). One of these lines was the same as that on the first card, and the other two lines were clearly longer or shorter (i.e., a near-100% rate of correct responding was expected). Each participant was then asked to say aloud which line matched the length of that on the first card. Before the experiment, all confederates were given detailed instructions on how they should respond to each trial (card presentation). They would always unanimously nominate one comparator, but on certain trials they would give the correct response and on others, an incorrect response. The group was seated such that the real participant always responded last.
Subjects completed 18 trials. On the first two trials, both the subject and the confederates gave the obvious, correct answer. On the third trial, the confederates would all give the same wrong answer. This wrong-responding recurred on 11 of the remaining 15 trials. It was subjects' behavior on these 12 "critical trials" that formed the aim of the study: to test how many subjects would change their answer to conform to those of the 7 confederates, despite it being wrong.
Results
In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, the error rate on the critical stimuli was less than 1%.[1]
In the confederate condition also, the majority of participants' responses remained correct (63.2 per cent), but a sizable minority of responses conformed to the confederate (incorrect) answer (36.8 percent).
