Michael A. Hogg > Quotes

“The original Asch studies involved a group of seven to nine people sitting in a semi-circle taking it in turn to declare which of three simultaneously presented stimulus lines was the same length as a standard comparison line. Only the last person to respond was a true naïve subject, all the others, unbeknown to the subject, were confederates of the experimenter. … The results revealed that subjects registered incredulity and gave signs of distress and anxiety. Only 25 per cent managed to resist the group pressure throughout, 33 per cent conformed on half or more of the focal trials, and 5 per cent conformed on all of them. All in all subjects yielded on about 33 per cent of trials. Asch reasoned that since the stimuli were unambiguous subjects could not be using the others’ judgements as information about the correct response, rather they were conforming in order not to appear different or in order to avoid censure and rejection by the other members of the group”
― Michael A. Hogg, Social Identifications: A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes