Great experiment on why some people do not wake up to current world issues.

The Asch conformity experiments were a series of studies published in the 1950s that demonstrated the power of conformity in groups. These are also known as the "Asch Paradigm".

Method

In the basic Asch paradigm, the participants — the real subjects and the confederates — were all seated in a classroom. They were asked a variety of questions about the lines such as how long is A, compare the length of A to an everyday object, which line was longer than the other, which lines were the same length, etc. The group was told to announce their answers to each question out loud. The confederates always provided their answers before the study participant, and always gave the same answer as each other. They answered a few questions correctly but eventually began providing incorrect responses.

In a control group, with no pressure to conform to an erroneous view, only one subject out of 35 ever gave an incorrect answer. Solomon Asch hypothesized that the majority of people would not conform to something obviously wrong; however, when surrounded by individuals all voicing an incorrect answer, participants provided incorrect responses on a high proportion of the questions (32%). Seventy-five percent of the participants gave an incorrect answer to at least one question.

Results

Variations of the basic paradigm tested how many confederates were necessary to induce conformity, examining the influence of just one confederate and as many as fifteen confederates. Results indicate that one confederate has virtually no influence and two confederates have only a small influence. When three or more confederates are present, the tendency to conform is relatively stable.




Another story on why we follow Government policies.



Now here is a test for all citizens, did 9/11 occur as stated by the commission report? Using what logic and intelligence you have been given prove you are not beholden to group think. 



RIP: Beverly Eckert