What did Solomon Asch do?
Solomon Asch was a social and Gestalt psychologist Solomon Asch was most famous for his experiments on conformity Solomon Asch found that conformity exists in group settings, yet is reduced when there is the presence of a dissenter in the group
What was Solomon Asch's conformity experiment?
His famous conformity experiment demonstrated that people would change their response due to social pressure in order to conform to the rest of the group. 2 "The human mind is an organ for the discovery of truths rather than of falsehoods." —Solomon Asch Solomon Eliot Asch was born September 14, 1907, in Warsaw, Poland.
What did Asch’s experiment show?
Asch went on to conduct further experiments in order to determine which factors influenced how and when people conform. He found that: Conformity tends to increase when more people are present. However, there is little change once the group size goes beyond four or five people. Conformity also increases when the task becomes more difficult.
What are the limitations of the Asch experiment?
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?
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Who was Solomon Asch?
Solomon Asch was a reknowned Polish-American pscyhologist
What two fields of psychology did Asch contribute to?
Social psychology and Gestalt psychology
What makes Asch's approach to psycology and research interesting?
He used his background in Gestalt psychology and applied it to his social psychology studies
To whom did Asch serve as a PhD supervisor?
Stanley Milgram
What field of psychology did Asch conduct his most famous experiment in?
Conformity
What is confomirty?
When someone changes their behavior or beliefs to fit in with a group
How did Asch study conformity?
He had participants try to match the length of one line to three others and had other people in the room give intentionally incorrect answers
What are the results of Asch's experiment?
The results of Asch's experiment resonate with what we know to be true about the nature of social forces and norms in our lives. The behavior and expectations of others shape how we think and act on a daily basis because what we observe among others teaches us what is normal, and expected of us. The results of the study also raise interesting questions and concerns about how knowledge is constructed and disseminated, and how we can address social problems that stem from conformity, among others.
What did Solomon Asch demonstrate about social pressure?
The Asch Conformity Experiments, conducted by psychologist Solomon Asch in the 1950s, demonstrated the power of conformity in groups and showed that even simple objective facts cannot withstand the distorting pressure of group influence.
Who conducted the Asch conformity experiment?
The Asch Conformity Experiments, conducted by psychologist Solomon Asch in the 1950s, demonstrated the power of conformity in groups and showed that even simple objective facts cannot withstand the distorting pressure of group influence.
What was Asch's goal?
Asch's goal was to see if the real participant would be pressured to answer incorrectly in the instances when the Confederates did so, or whether their belief in their own perception and correctness would outweigh the social pressure provided by the responses of the other group members.
What are Solomon Asch's contributions to psychology?
Contributions to Psychology. Solomon Asch is considered a pioneer of social psychology and Gestalt psychology. 5 His conformity experiments demonstrated the power of social influence and still serve as a source of inspiration for social psychology researchers today.
Where was Solomon Asch born?
Solomon Eliot Asch was born September 14, 1907, in Warsaw, Poland. He died February 20, 1996, in Haverford, Pennsylvania at the age of 88.
What was Asch famous for?
It was during the 1950s, Asch became famous for his series of experiments (known as the Asch conformity experiments) that demonstrated the effects of social pressure on conformity.
What is Asch SE?
Asch SE. Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. In: Guetzkow H, ed., Groups, leadership and men; research in human relations. Pittsburgh PA: Carnegie Press; 1951.
What did Asch believe about peer pressure?
While Asch's work illustrated how peer pressure influences social behavior (often in negative ways), Asch still believed that people tended to behave decently towards each other. The power of situations and group pressure, however, could often lead to less than ideal behavior and decision-making.
Where did Asch go to college?
Asch attended the College of the City of New York and graduated with his bachelor's degree in 1928. He then went to Columbia University, where he was mentored by Max Wertheimer and earned his master's degree in 1930 and his Ph.D. in 1932.
Who supervised Stanley Milgram's Ph.D. at Harvard University?
Asch also supervised Stanley Milgram's Ph.D. at Harvard University and inspired Milgram's own highly influential research on obedience. Milgram's work helped demonstrate how far people would go to obey an order from an authority figure. 6.
What did Solomon Asch do in his experiment?
Solomon Asch conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.
What was Asch interested in?
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.".
How did Asch use the line judgment 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.
What did Asch think of the high levels of conformity found by Asch?
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 do about the phenomena of conformity.
What was the main problem with Sherif's (1935) conformity experiment?
He believed that 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?
What did Perrin and Spencer argue about?
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.
What does Asch mean by low ecological validity?
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.
Birth and Death
Early Life
Career and Pioneering Research
- The results of Asch's experiment resonate with what we know to be true about the nature of social forces and norms in our lives. The behavior and expectations of others shape how we think and act on a daily basis because what we observe among others teaches us what is normal, and expected of us. The results of the study also raise interesting quest...
Contributions to Psychology
Selected Publications
- Solomon Asch was born in Warsaw but emigrated to the United States in 1920 at the age of 13. His family lived in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and he learned English by reading the works of Charles Dickens. Asch attended the College of the City of New York and graduated with his bachelor's degree in 1928. He then went to Columbia University, where he was mentored by Ma…