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Solomon Asch Research Paper

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The Polish gestalt psychologist, Solomon Asch was born in the city of Warsaw on September 14th, 1907. At the age of thirteen, his family immigrated to the United States, in which he resides for the rest of his life. Being mostly known for his contributions in social psychology and his experiments on conformity through the Asch Conformity Experiments, he set the foundation for the elaboration of social psychology today.
Before the numerous contributions to the field of psychology, Asch went through quite a long journey of education. Asch graduated from the City College of New York in 1928, where he earned his Bachelor of Science. Although he majored in both literature and science, his interests in psychology only became apparent towards the …show more content…
His contributions were through the many conformity experiments he conducted. These experiments demonstrated the power of social pressure and influence on why people conform under different circumstances. This allowed psychologists to not only understand why conformity happens but when it is more likely to happen and how it could possibly be prevented. The experiment consisted of seven to nine participants who sat together in a room, but only one of those men is the actual test subject. The test subject is unaware that everyone else in the room is in on the aim and procedures of the experiment. The men are then shown two cards at a time, one with one vertical line and the other with three varying lengths of vertical lines. They are then asked to match the single line with one of the three lines on the other card. After a few cards, the selected associates purposely choose the wrong answer to see how the participant reacts when everyone else but them chooses a different answer. The outcome of the experiment came to a consensus that 75% of the time a person conforms their most fundamental perceptions at least once and 37% will agree with the rest of the group in their incorrect answer consecutively. When there is someone else in the group who agrees with the participant’s answer, their conformity rate drops by two thirds. Only 5% of people conform when they are writing down the answers instead of saying it out loud. Through this experiment, it could be concluded that people are more likely to conform when they are in they feel like they are in the spotlight and their opinion is the unpopular opinion in the

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