No. 021951–56USACollege students

When everyone is wrong

A group of students sat around a table for a “vision test.” In each round they saw one line and were asked which of three other lines matched it in length. The answer was obvious.

But everyone at the table except one person was working with the experimenter. In some rounds they all gave the same wrong answer, one after another, out loud. The real participant was seated so that his turn came near the end.

You first

Everyone before you said “A.” What would you say?

This answer is hypothetical; it is not the same as what you would do in a real lab.

What percentage of participants went along with the group at least once and gave the obviously wrong answer?

Original result

About 75% of participants went along with the group at least once. Roughly a third of answers in the critical rounds (about 37%) were wrong. Without group pressure, the error rate was below 1%. About a quarter of participants never conformed at all.

What we know today

A 1996 meta-analysis of 133 studies from 17 countries found that the effect replicates but its size varies: conformity in the US has declined since the 1950s, and it is higher in collectivist cultures than in individualist ones.

The surprising part

A single person giving the right answer was enough: with one such “ally” at the table, conformity dropped from about 37% to about 5%.

Sources

Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity. Psychological Monographs, 70(9), 1–70. doi.org/10.1037/h0093718
Bond, R., & Smith, P. B. (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 119(1), 111–137. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.119.1.111

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