Why you need to be the one to speak up
Each of us sometimes feels the pressure of being the lone dissenter in a group. It can make you sweat and it can make your heart pound when you have to go up against the group. How strong is the pressure to conform? This topic was explored and well-documented in the 1950s by Solomon Asch, a social psychologist who pitted the human tendency to conform against the tendency to be truthful.
Asch told innocent subjects that they were going to participate in an experiment on visual perception. The subjects were to participate in groups of seven to nine persons per group. The group was instructed to indicate which of the three “comparison” lines were closest in length to a given line. Each person in the group gave his or her answer in turn. There was only one innocent subject per group, however. Everyone else in the group was a stooge who had been instructed to follow a routine prearranged by the experimenter.
The test was actually rather easy and the first three trials were simply a set up for what was going to happen next. On the fourth trial (and, similarly, on selected subsequent trials), where the given line was 1.5 inches long, the three “comparison” lines were .5 inches long, 1.5 inches long and 2 inches long. The experiment had been arranged so that each of the stooges were designated to give his or her answer before the innocent subject had a chance. On that fourth trial, the …
