At the beginning of fifties a report was published in the United States about an experiment performed more than fifty times by the social psychologist Solomon Asch. Volunteers had to estimate the length of various lines as a ratio to a reference line. It was an easy task - or so it appeared at first glance - because the line in agreement could be readily identified. Eight to nine persons participated in the experiment, which proceeded as follows: as soon as the three comparison lines were suspended next to the reference line, each person, in the sequence from left to right, indicated which of the three lines corresponded in his or her opinion to the reference line. Each experiment had to performed twelve times, with twelve repetitions.
The following test was now carried out: after all the volunteers had agreed on the correct line during the first two runs, the experimenter changed the situation. His assistants, who knew the purpose of the experiment, all indicated too short a line as being in agreement with the reference line. The behavior of a naive volunteer, the only person unaware, who sat at the end of the row, was now examined under the the pressure of a dominant different opinion. Would he begin to waver? Would he agree with the majority verdict, no matter how much it contradicted his own? Or would he uphold his own judgement?
Results: of ten volunteers, two could not be persuaded to change their minds; two agreed only once or twice during ten test runs, but six out of ten indicated several times the obviously wrong minority view as their own. From this one might conclude that even in the harmless question and in a rather indifferent situation that does not affect their real interest most people follow the opinion of the majority even when they can have no doubt that it is incorrect.
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