 | | | | | | | | |
|
| |
| MIND CHANGERS
|  | |  | MISSED A PROGRAMME?
Go to the Listen Again page | |
| | | Landmark experiments in psychology | | | |
| |
PROG 1 – Solomon Asch - Conformity
PROG 2 – Jean Piaget – The Three Mountains
PROG 3 – Sir Frederic Bartlett – The War of the Ghosts
| | |  | | | Asch's conformity test - is A longer than B? |  |  Listen to this edition | |
PROG 1 - Solomon Asch - Conformity
Every day we try to fit in. We may like to think we're individual but most of the time we don't actually want to stand out too much. It's this idea of conformity that the American social psychologist Solomon Asch studied in the 1950s, using nothing more complex than straight black lines drawn on pieces of card - it's one of the classic experiments in psychology.
Asch believed people wouldn't go along with the crowd; he set up his experiment to prove that people would stand up against group pressure. Unknown to his subjects, the rest of the group were stooges or plants, who'd been instructed to say A was longer than B, even though it patently wasn't. Contrary to his expectations, Asch discovered that a third of people went along with the group, even when it contradicted the evidence of their own eyes.
Claudia Hammond investigates the reasons for this and asks whether we're more or less likely to conform today.
Those taking part:-
Roy Eidelson - Executive Director of the Solomon Asch Center
Mark Glanville
The Goldberg Variations by Mark Glanville, Flamingo 2003 ISBN 0-00-711841-4
(Paperback to be published 5 Jan 04, 0-00-711842-2)
Henry Gleitman - Professor of Psychology at University of Pennsylvania
Clark McAuley - Professor of Psychology at Bryn Mawr College
Dean Peabody - Professor of Psychology (retired), Swarthmore College
Paul Rozin - Professor of Psychology at University of Pennsylvania
Peter Smith - Professor Emeritus of Social Psychology, University of Sussex
R.A. Bond & P.B. Smith (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of
the Asch (1951,1956) line judgment task. Psychological Bulletin, 119,
111-137.
Dr Clifford Stott - Department of Psychology, Liverpool University
Stott, C.J. & Reicher, S.D. (1998). How conflict escalates: The inter-group dynamics of collective football crowd 'violence'. Sociology, 32, 353-377.
Stott, C.J. & Reicher, S.D. (1998). Crowd action as inter-group process: Introducing the police perspective. European Journal of Social Psychology, 28, 509-529.
Stott, C.J. & Drury, J. (2000). Crowds, context and identity: dynamic categorization processes in the 'poll tax riot'. Human Relations. 53(2), 247-273.
Stott, C.J., Hutchison, P. & Drury, J. (2001) 'Hooligans' abroad? Inter-group dynamics, social identity and participation in collective 'disorder' at the 1998 World Cup Finals. British Journal of Social Psychology. 40, 359-384
| | |
RELATED LINKS | | | BBCi Science
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites
| | |
| |
| |
