Here is a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIh4MkcfJA) describing the experiment: [](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIh4MkcfJA) One criticism concerns whether Asch’s findings can be generalized outside the lab to the real world. In other words, does the participant’s answer in a lab setting about the length of some lines really have much to do regarding his behavior in real life? This is certainly a valid concern, at the same time one could argue that in real life the need for conformity would be even more meaningful. If the participant is willing to conform to a majority composed of people he doesn’t know with whom he will likely never have to interact with again, how would he behave with a group of people he has a stronger connection to? Asch’s experiments would go on to spark a great wave of studies to further explore conformity, obedience and group think dynamics. In 1961, 6 years after this paper was published, Stanley Milgram began conducting his [famous “electric shock” experiment into obedience](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdUu3u9Web4). He found that between 61 and 66% of all participants were prepared to inflict fatal shocks to another participant when told to. Ten years after, in August 1971, Philip Zimbardo conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment. One key criticism of Asch’s study has been the use of confederates who pretended to believe unanimously. Attempts to replicate the study could be confounded by the fact that some confederates will be more convincing than others. To attempt to solve this Kazuo Mori and Miho Arai developed a [new version of Asch’s experiment](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kazuo_Mori/publication/276001996_Boys_Be_Independent_Conformity_Development_of_Japanese_Children_in_the_Asch_Experiment_without_Using_Confederates/links/55bc314208aec0e5f441990d.pdf) that doesn’t make use of confederates. Instead, they used glasses with polarizing filters (similar to the ones handed out to watch 3D movies) which allowed different participants to view the same display yet see different things. There were a number of other differences between this study and Asch’s experiments (e.g. the participants in this study knew each other) but researchers observed that older men seemed to be significantly less swayed by the majority. ### Muzafer Sherif experiments Muzafer Sherif, a Turkish-American social psychologist conducted one of the earliest conformity experiments in 1936. Sherif was interested in how groups influence the behavior of individuals by shaping how reality is perceived. Sherif’s experiment was built around the autokinetic illusion—the sense that a stationary point of light in a completely darkened environment is moving (you might be able to experience this effect by looking at the stars in a clear night - it is is related to [this class of optical illusions](http://i.imgur.com/4hkneeR.jpg)). To start off, Sherif put individual participants in a darkened room, presented them with a stationary point of light (projected onto a screen) on trial after trial, and had them estimate how far it “moved” each time. Some people thought, on average, that the light moved very little on each trial while others thought it moved a good deal more. The participants were then tested in groups of three and were asked to call out their estimates. Sherif found that people’s estimates tended to converge over time. Those who individually had thought the light had moved a fair amount soon lowered their estimates; those who individually had thought it had moved very little soon raised theirs. A follow-up experiment showed that when participants came back for individual testing up to 1 year later, their judgments still showed the influence of their group’s earlier responses.  *One Group’s Judgments in Sherif’s Autokinetic Studie* Asch’s work received widespread acceptance and has been replicated in numerous studies since then. In addition, it sparked a huge wave of additional studies in the field of conformity that continue up to the present. Here are some interesting studies related to Asch’s experiment: - [Nolan et al, (2008). Normative Social Influence is Underdetected](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167208316691) - In this study, Jessica Nolan and her colleagues gave a sample of California residents information urging them to conserve electricity. The household members received one of four messages. Three of these presented basic reasons to conserve: to protect the environment, to benefit society, or to save money. The fourth message contained information designed to promote conformity: The participants were told that the majority of their neighbors conserved electrical energy. The researchers then measured actual energy usage from the homes’ electrical meters. They found that the fourth message, containing informa- tion about the behavior of one’s neighbors, caused people to conserve more energy than did the other three messages. - [Bond, R., & Smith, P. B. (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch's (1952b, 1956) line judgment task.](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1996-01401-008) - This study seeks to analyze, among other things, if culture plays a role in conformity. The researchers found that more collectivist countries such as Japan and India showed higher levels of conformity than in more individualistic countries like the US. - [Crutchfield, R. S. (1955). Conformity and character.](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1956-02454-001) - In this version of Asch’s experiment the researchers wanted to eliminate the inherent social pressure and risk of embarrassment resulting from participants having the state their choices out loud to the confederates. Crutchfield’s design accomplishes this by placing participants into individual side-by-side cubicles (so that they couldn’t see each other) and using a system of switches and lights to allow participants to choose their answer and view the answers from the rest of the group. In reality, the participants were being deceived as the experimenter was controlling the display lights on each participant's electric response panel. Under this setting, which became known as the Crutchfield situation, fewer participants conformed to the majority than in Asch’s original setting. One criticism concerns whether Asch’s findings can be generalized outside the lab to the real world. In other words, does the participant’s answer in a lab setting about the length of some lines really have much to do regarding his behavior in real life? This is certainly a valid concern, at the same time one could argue that in real life the need for conformity would be even more meaningful. If the participant is willing to conform to a majority composed of people he doesn’t know with whom he will likely never have to interact with again, how would he behave with a group of people he has a stronger connection to?