Asch Conformity Essay

Introduction According to the Cambridge dictionary, conformity is a behaviour that follows the usual standards that are expected by a group or society. Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behaviour in order to fit in with a group (McLeod, 2008). Taken from a social psychology textbook, conformity is the term used for the convergence of individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behaviour towards a group's norms (Mackie & Smith, 2007). From the three definitions above, conformity, when put into simpler terms, is when a person follows the standards of a group or of society, regardless of whether they are right or wrong. Conformity Experiment
One famous experiment about conformity is the Solomon Asch Conformity Experiment. In 1951, Asch conducted an experiment to investigate on conformity and social pressure. The experiment was
These 12 trials were also called ‘critical trials’. Asch wanted to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view (McLeod, 2008), even if the answers given were wrong. True enough, when Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view, a total of 32% of the participants conformed to the answers of the majority answers for the critical trials. Asch found that people conform for two main reasons. One reason is because people generally want to fit in with other groups (known as normative influence). The other reason is because people often believe that the group is better informed than they are (known as informational influence). As Asch explored and gave variety to his experiment, he found out that the bigger the group, the higher chance of people conforming to them. He also found that when people are uncertain about an answer, they tend to look to others for confirmation; the more difficult the task, the greater the conformity (McLeod, 2008). Situation and