Solomon Asch
Polish-born American Gestalt-influenced social psychologist
Social psychologist trained in Gestalt psychology who taught at Swarthmore College. He is known for line-judgement experiments, begun in 1951, in which participants faced a unanimous but wrong majority.
Why this person matters
Asch's line-judgement studies became the standard textbook demonstration of social influence. He read conformity through his Gestalt training, asking how people perceive a group's judgement. At Swarthmore his colleagues included Wolfgang Köhler and Hans Wallach, and together they made the department a leading centre of Gestalt psychology.
Main contributions
Line-judgement conformity experiments
From 1951 Asch placed a participant among confederates who gave clearly wrong answers when matching a line to three comparison lines. About three-quarters of participants went along with the wrong majority at least once. The 1956 Psychological Monographs paper reported the fuller set of studies.
The effect of one ally
In Asch's design, pressure rose as the unanimous wrong majority grew from one to three people, then levelled off. One confederate giving the correct answer substantially reduced conformity.
Social Psychology textbook
His 1952 book Social Psychology (Prentice-Hall) set out a Gestalt-influenced approach to the field, holding that social acts must be understood in their setting.
Context and limits
The best-known study used 123 white male college students aged 17 to 25, and confederates gave wrong answers on 12 of 18 trials, so the sample is narrow and the situation staged. Late in his career Asch was disappointed with the direction of social psychology. The sources read do not report replications or later critiques of the line task.
In your introductory course
Social psychology.Asch appears in the social influence and conformity section. Students meet the three-line task as the classic demonstration of group pressure on judgement.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 12.4. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1947
Joined the psychology department at Swarthmore College, where he stayed for 19 years.
- 1951
Began the line-judgement experiments for which he is best known.
- 1952
Published the textbook Social Psychology.
- 1956
Published Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority in Psychological Monographs.
Sources
- Swarthmore College, 1951: Psychologist Solomon Asch's Famous ExperimentsUniversity. Institutional biography inspected.
- University of Pennsylvania Almanac, Death of Solomon Asch (1996)University. Institutional biography inspected.
- Wikipedia, Solomon AschReference work. Reference article inspected.