Foundations of sand?

Christian Jarrett

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The power of independence

Another psychology classic retold in any textbook you happen to sample are the so-called Asch ‘conformity experiments’, in which lone participants, embedded in groups of confederates working for the researcher, were asked to compare the lengths of lines. The key test was whether participants would go along with a majority opinion that was clearly wrong.
Your chosen reference will no doubt inform you that Solomon Asch’s experiments provide a striking illustration of the power of social conformity. Indeed, a fourth edition of Richard Gross’s Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour on my bookshelf quotes social psychologist van Avermaet stating unequivocally: ‘The [Asch] results reveal the tremendous impact of an “obviously” incorrect but unanimous majority on the judgements of a lone individual.’
But is that really what the results showed? A paper published in 1990 by Ronald Friend (now emeritus professor at Stony Brook University) and colleagues, contends that Asch actually saw his results as a demonstration of the power of independence (see box opposite). Interpreting his results, Asch wrote in 1952: ‘…the facts that were being judged were, under the circumstances, the most decisive.’
Of course, a degree of subjectivity is inevitable – one reader might focus on what they see as the remarkable number of participants who stayed independent, while another marvels at the number who yielded. Given this scope for varying interpretation, the most important aim for any author, presumably, is to report the results in an unbiased fashion – something an analysis of textbooks by Ronald Friend and Yvonne Rafferty in 1985 showed hasn’t tended to happen.
Over half the 99 textbooks sampled quoted the percentage of responses in which participants yielded to the group majority, without even mentioning the far larger proportion of responses which went against the mistaken herd (only one writer showed the opposite bias). As regards individual differences, 42 per cent of books gave greater emphasis to quoting the number of participants who conformed, while just 5 per cent showed the opposite bias. Another misleading habit has been to flag up the percentage of participants who yielded to majority opinion at least once (76 per cent), without providing the opposite figure – the 95 per cent of participants who stayed independent at least once.
Others have challenged the whole conformity versus independence debate as overly simplistic. Bert Hodges and Anne Geyer published a paper in 2006 in which they argued the most interesting participants in Asch’s studies were those – the majority, in fact – who sometimes yielded to the majority opinion but sometimes stayed independent, as they attempted pragmatically to balance the demands of an extremely awkward social situation. According to Hodges and Geyer’s account, giving the occasional false answer, in line with majority opinion, might actually represent the best strategy for persuading others of the truth of your own claims, by showing them that their judgments are relevant and have been noted.
Yvonne Rafferty (Psychology Professor at Pace University in New York) says the misinterpretation of Asch’s experiments continues to this day, even finding a voice on the internet. ‘I just Googled “Asch Study Social Psychology”,’ Rafferty says, and the top link [tinyurl.com/6pjmma] brought me to a blog site that states “Solomon Asch’s classic... social psychology experiment shows that many of us will deny our own senses just to conform with others”.’ Rafferty notes that Wikipedia propagates the same line, even suggesting that Asch’s experiments provide an empirical basis for the ideas on conformity in George Orwell’s 1984.
Why do people who write about classic psychology experiments want to propagate the idea that we’re all prone to becoming mindless sheep in the face of a majority opinion? Rafferty believes part of the answer lies in the headline appeal of the notion that conformity is all powerful. But beyond that she wonders if there lies a darker motive. ‘Why is individualism so overvalued by society – what threat do organisations perceive if we are not viewed as sheep?’, Rafferty asks. ‘Is there perhaps such a fear of social movements by which we might come together for a common cause?’
Echoing Manning’s views on the influence of the Genovese myth, Rafferty believes that the misreporting of the Asch experiments has had a harmful effect on the direction taken by social psychology research. ‘In overemphasising the powerful but detrimental effect of the group on the individual, the discipline of social psychology may have inadvertently undermined its potential usefulness in showing the practical contribution and positive benefits that groups can have for individuals,’ Rafferty says.