Imagine that you’re a participant sitting in a lab with seven other participants. To be honest, you can’t believe that you’re getting paid to participate in this study, as it’s so incredibly simple. The experimenter shows the group an image of a black line (called the test line). He then shows the group another image featuring three other lines, labelled A, B and C (see Figure 1). He simply asks each member of the group to state, in turn, which of the three lines matches the test line. The correct answer is obviously C. Line A is far too short and line B is far too long. You’re waiting your turn to say ‘C’, when, to your amazement, one participant says ‘A’. Then another. Then another. You’re gobsmacked. Why are they saying ‘A’ when the correct answer is so obviously ‘C’? Suddenly, it’s your turn to give your answer. What on earth should you say?
You might think that you’d say ‘C’ regardless of what the other participants said. But this is not what Solomon Asch, the psychologist who conducted this experiment in America in the 1950s, found (see this YouTube video for a brief reenactment of the study: www.tinyurl.com/yck33ve9).
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