Would You Go Along With The Crowd Even If You Knew They Were Wrong?
Solomon Asch’s famous conformity experiment revealed just how powerful social pressure can be.
This photograph was taken at the Blohm and Voss shipyard in Hamburg in 1936 during the launch of a German naval vessel. In the circled area of the image, one man stands with his arms folded while those around him perform the Nazi salute. The man is widely believed to be August Landmesser, although the identification is not absolutely certain. The image has become a powerful symbol of individual resistance to group pressure.
Imagine sitting in a small room with several other people taking part in what you are told is a simple visual perception test.
You are shown two cards. One shows a single vertical line. The other shows three lines of different lengths labeled 1, 2, and 3.
Your task is straightforward: say which of the three lines matches the length of the line on the first card.
The answer seems obvious.
But when it’s time for everyone to respond, the people around you begin giving the same answer.
And it’s clearly wrong.
One after another, they repeat it.
Soon it’s your turn.
Do you say what you know is correct, or do you go along with the group?
Many people would like to think they would simply trust what they see. But when psychologist Solomon Asch ran this classic experiment in the early 1950s, the results told a different story.
How the experiment worked
The situation described above closely mirrors what participants experienced in Asch’s experiment. The crucial detail was that everyone else in the room was working with the researchers.
These individuals were confederates, instructed in advance to give specific answers during the experiment. On certain trials they all gave the same incorrect response.
The real participant was seated near the end of the group, meaning they heard several people confidently give the wrong answer before it was their turn.
As Asch later described it, the experiment placed one individual in the position of “a minority of one against a wrong and unanimous majority,” confronting what he called “the clear evidence of his senses.”
The short clip below shows a later replication of the experiment. As you watch, notice the moment when the confederates begin giving the same incorrect answer, and how the participant responds.
As the demonstration shows, the early trials proceed smoothly. Confederates and the participant compare the lines and give the correct answer.
But after a few rounds something changes. The confederates begin giving the same incorrect response.
One after another, they repeat it.
Now the participant faces a difficult choice: trust their own perception or go along with the group.
What Asch found
Across the critical trials in which the group intentionally gave incorrect answers, participants conformed about 37 percent of the time.
Looking at the results another way, roughly three quarters of participants went along with the group at least once during the experiment.
Importantly, the task itself was not difficult. In a control condition where participants judged the lines on their own, 35 out of 37 participants made no errors at all. When people answered individually without group pressure, mistakes were extremely rare.
This made the findings even more striking. The errors were not caused by confusion about the lines themselves, but by the social situation participants found themselves in.
Reflecting on these results, Asch later wrote:
That intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern.
Breaking the power of the majority
The video above also illustrates two important variations that Asch explored.
When one of the confederates also gave the correct answer, conformity dropped sharply. Similarly, when participants were allowed to record their responses privately rather than announcing them aloud, conformity also fell substantially. Once the appearance of complete agreement was broken, participants were far more willing to trust their own judgment.
The situations Asch explored in the laboratory still appear in everyday life.
Consider jury deliberations. Research on jury decision-making has shown that when juries begin deliberations with a strong initial majority, minority jurors may hesitate to voice dissenting views. However, when even one juror openly challenges the emerging consensus, discussion often becomes more thorough and evidence is examined more carefully.
A vivid illustration of this dynamic appears in one of my all-time favorite films, 12 Angry Men (1957). The story begins with eleven jurors ready to deliver a guilty verdict, while one juror insists on examining the evidence more carefully. His willingness to question the majority does not immediately persuade the others, but it opens the door for further discussion. As the conversation unfolds, other jurors begin to reconsider their positions.
This process is referred to within psychology as minority influence. Research by Serge Moscovici demonstrated that a consistent minority can sometimes influence the judgments of a majority, particularly when the minority maintains its position calmly and consistently.
Studies of decision-making in organizations and governmental foreign policy have shown that when groups appear to reach quick consensus, individuals may suppress doubts in order to maintain harmony, a phenomenon known as groupthink. Encouraging dissenting viewpoints, by contrast, can improve the quality of group decisions by prompting deeper evaluation of evidence and alternatives.
Historical context and cultural limitations
Like many classic psychology studies, Asch’s experiment was conducted with a relatively narrow group of participants.
In his 1956 report, he notes that the subjects were male college students between the ages of 17 and 25. While this was typical of psychology research at the time, it serves to highlight a broader issue in psychological research. Much of the evidence in psychology has historically come from participants in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies, often referred to as WEIRD populations.
In a widely cited analysis, Henrich, Heine, and Ara Norenzayan argued that people from WEIRD societies may actually be psychological outliers when compared with global populations.
For that reason, many researchers emphasize the importance of conducting psychological studies across more diverse cultural settings. Returning to Asch’s study, this of course begs the question: would people from different cultures respond in the same way?
Research suggests that cultural context can influence how individuals respond to group pressure. A large cross-cultural analysis of replications of the Asch paradigm conducted across 17 countries found that conformity levels tended to be higher in societies that emphasize collective harmony than in those that prioritize individual independence.
Even so, Asch’s work has proven remarkably robust. Research on social influence conducted across many countries and contexts continues to demonstrate how strongly group consensus can shape individual judgment.
While the strength of conformity may vary across cultures and time (research indicates that conformity has declined since the 1950s), the tension between individual perception and group influence appears to be a widespread and durable feature of human social life.
Final thoughts
The Asch conformity experiments remain one of the clearest demonstrations of how group influence can shape human judgment.
Placed in a situation where everyone else appears to agree, people will sometimes abandon their own judgment even when they know the correct answer.
But that’s not the whole story.
Many participants resisted the group entirely. Others only yielded occasionally. And the simple presence of one other person willing to disagree dramatically reduced the pressure to conform.
Asch himself was careful not to reduce human behavior to blind conformity. As he wrote:
The striving for independence and resistance to encroachment are as much facts about people as is conformity.
In other words, the experiment reveals both sides of human social behavior.
We are influenced by the groups around us.
But we are also capable of standing apart from them when it matters.
If you found yourself in that room, hearing everyone else confidently give the wrong answer, what do you think you would do?
Sponsored recommendation
If this article got you thinking about what it actually takes to stand apart from the crowd, Todd Kashdan’s The Art of Insubordination is where to go next. Praised by Seth Godin, Robert Cialdini, Susan David, and Charles Duhigg as essential reading for anyone who wants to speak up and make change.
Kashdan is a professor of psychology at George Mason University and one of the world’s leading researchers on courage and psychological flexibility. He makes a compelling case that principled dissent is not a personality trait you either have or you don’t. It’s a skill, grounded in science, that can be learned and practised.
Drawing on decades of research and real-world stories of people who successfully challenged the majority, the book gives you the practical tools to speak up, be heard, and make change without burning bridges in the process.
Highly recommended.
Get your copy of The Art of Insubordination here.
Keep learning with all about psychology
The All About Psychology Substack is your go-to source for all things psychology. Subscribe today and instantly receive my bestselling Psychology Student Guide right in your inbox.
Upgrade to a paid subscription and as an extra thank you, you’ll also get the eBook version of my book Psychology Q & A: Great Answers to Fascinating Psychology Questions.
Why Upgrade to Paid?
Every penny of paid subscriber support goes directly towards hosting and running costs, helping keep All-About-Psychology.com free for everyone.
Your support ensures that:
Students and educators can continue to access the most important and influential journal articles in the history of psychology, completely free.
Readers everywhere can hear directly from world-renowned psychologists, authors and leading experts in the field.
High-quality free content for students, educators, and the general public continues to be created and shared on a regular basis.
A bit about me
David Webb is a psychology educator and author who has spent over twenty-five years helping people make sense of why we think, feel, and behave the way we do. He runs All About Psychology, a long-running hub of articles, interviews, and resources visited by over a million people each year.
His books, including Why We Are The Way We Are, are written for curious readers interested in what makes us tick.
You can explore more of his work and books on his Amazon author page.
This was one of the first psych studies I learned as an undergrad. The prof actually drew the figures on the blackboard (c.1978) and had us raise our hands after asking which line was longer. Blew my mind. It confirmed my skeptical soul.
I really appreciated how clearly you walked through the psychological tension in Asch’s experiment. The moment where participants hear a unanimous but obviously incorrect answer before their own turn is such a simple setup, yet it reveals something deeply unsettling about social influence.
The section discussing how the presence of even one dissenter dramatically reduces conformity stood out to me. It’s a powerful reminder that social courage doesn’t always need to be widespread—sometimes a single voice is enough to change the psychological atmosphere of a group.
I also liked that you didn’t frame the findings as proof of blind conformity alone, but highlighted Asch’s point about the human striving for independence. That balance between social pressure and personal judgment is what makes the study feel so enduringly relevant.
Thought-provoking piece and a great reminder of how subtle group dynamics can shape decisions in everyday life.