ShmoopTube

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And here's your shmoop du jour brought to you by Solomon Asch

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whose research into conformity was both groundbreaking and significant [Solomon stood as sheep walk past]

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that is unless you don't agree then we take it back it we'll go with whatever

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you say..All right here's question which of the following was an independent

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variable manipulated in Asch's research and your potential answers right there.....

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all right well let's take a look at him choose one say it aloud now what if we [Finger pointing to potential answers]

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told you that nine out of ten dentist recommended you select answer E would

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you change your mind why dentists? well it worked for the toothpaste ad, why

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wouldn't it work here alright Solomon Asch is famous for his work in [Dentists gathered together with a toothpaste advert]

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conformity you know sheep following sheep his famous test went a little

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something like this he brought a group of male students into a room under the [Asch testing a group of male students in a classroom]

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guise of a vision test and showed them these images, their task was simple say

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which line on the right was the same length as the one on the left needless [Asch pointing to lines at the front of the class]

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to say the answer wasn't exactly rocket science but here's the trick all but one

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of the men in each group were in on it and we're told to supply the wrong [Male students giving a wrong answer for Asch's question]

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answer the real test would be to see if the unaware participants would actively

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choose an obviously incorrect response in order to conform with the group and [Male students actively selecting the wrong answer]

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we know what you're thinking there is no way you would ever choose the wrong line

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in such an easy test or maybe you're not in which case let me suggest some new [Boy wearing glasses pointing]

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glasses but here's the thing they did conform over 12 separate trials around

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75 percent of the participants conformed at least once so to answer your mom's

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age old question if everybody jumped off a bridge well about 75% of people would [Mom telling off her son]

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also take the plunge...All right now that we understand the study we can start to

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eliminate answers. E obviously isn't it because there wasn't any shocking being [Lightning flashing]

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done that is unless you can know the shock each participant must have felt

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when every single other person picked the obvious wrong answer and we have a [Student in shock at others picking the wrong answer]

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feeling the only thing their dietary habits affected was the amount of gas

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they felt the while they made the decision. Ethnicity wasn't relevant [Boy farts then laughs]

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either otherwise the conclusion probably would have stated the different levels

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of conformity based on ethnicity which it didn't and the number of participants [A bar chart with US, Mexico, China and UK flags]

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never changed it was always one naive and honest participant in with a group

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of big fat phonies, what did change across the many different trials was the size

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of each group, Asch found that people were more likely to conform in smaller groups [Two circles with different sized groups of people]

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than in larger ones this was due to the fact that they felt less anonymous and

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therefore more self-conscious about standing out well A is the answer we're

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looking for except A isn't actually right at all the answer is E, seriously,

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everyone at Shmoop picked E didn't you? mhmmm, just kidding. It's still A [Dentists agreeing to the answer A]

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