“The investigations described in this series are concerned with the conditions of independence and lack of independence in the face of group pressure. the abstract temper of present-day theory and investigation in this region rests to a considerable degree on a neglect of the cognitive and emotional experiences that are part of the individual’s psychological field. the understanding of social influences will require the study of a wide range of conditions and of the interrelated operations of different psychological functions. a group of seven to nine individuals was gathered in a classroom to take part in what appeared to be a simple experiment in visual discrimination. the subjects were all male, white college students, ranging in age from 17 to 25; the mean age was 20. for certain purposes a large number of critical subjects was required for the present experiment. the present report is based on a total of 123 subjects. the task consisted of the comparison of a standard line with three other lines, one of which was equal in length to the standard. we investigated some of the conditions responsible for independence and lack of independence in the face of arbitrary group pressure. to this end we produced a disagreement between a group and one individual member about a clear and simple issue of fact. the interview, which followed the experimental session, provided qualitative evidence concerning the effects produced by the majority, the particular properties of the experimental situation and their relation to more usual social contradictions were described. (psycinfo database record (c) 2012 apa, all rights reserved)”

“Two studies examined how incentives for accuracy (task importance) affected the social influence of inaccurate confederates in a modified asch situation (s. e. asch, 1951). not unexpectedly, when task difficulty was low, incentives for accuracy reduced the social impact of (inaccurate) confederates (study 1). however, when task difficulty was increased, the reverse was true, with individuals conforming more to an inaccurate confederate norm when incentives for accuracy were high (studies 1 and 2). the results are discussed in terms of possible mediating mechanisms and also in terms of their historical and pragmatic implications.”

“Morality has long been considered an inherent quality, an internal moral compass that is unswayed by the actions of those around us. the solomon asch paradigm was employed to gauge whether moral decision making is subject to conformity under social pressure as other types of decision making have been shown to be. participants made decisions about moral dilemmas either alone or in a group of confederates posing as peers. on a majority of trials confederates rendered decisions that were contrary to judgments typically elicited by the dilemmas. the results showed a pronounced effect of conformity: compared to the control condition, permissible actions were deemed less permissible when confederates found them objectionable, and impermissible actions were judged more permissible if confederates judged them so.”

“The social conformity paradigm of asch (1956) was replicated to investigate the relationship between age and conformist behavior. one hundred ten australian school children and adolescents between 3 and 17 years of age participated in the study. each participant was placed in the position of being a minority of 1 against a wrong but unanimous majority of 3. the results indicate that conformity decreases with age in perceptually unambiguous tasks. conflicting evidence from earlier studies can be attributed to task ambiguity in those studies.”

“Previous research has established that individuals from collectivistic cultures tend to conform more than their counterparts from individualistic cultures do [bond, r., & smith, p.b. (1996). culture and conformity: a meta-analysis of studies using asch’s (1952b, 1956) line judgment task. psychological bulletin 119(1) 111-137]. however, there is presently a dearth of research exploring the degree to which this kind of cross-cultural difference is also present in computer-mediated communication (cmc) contexts where group members are never met face-to-face (f-t-f). a normative social influence paradigm of line-length judgment (based on asch [asch, s.e., (1955). opinions and social pressure. scientific american 193(5) 31-35]) was employed to investigate the effects of communication medium (f-t-f against cmc) and culture (participants from individualistic cultures against those from collectivist cultures). a communication type × culture interaction was found, in which the expected cultural differences were demonstrated only in the face-to-face conditions, being absent in computer-mediated conditions. © 2006 elsevier ltd. all rights reserved.”

“The article focuses on a study in which the effect of centrality in social networks is determined. it states that in a social network centrality has effect on a conformity named asch-type conformity. it mentions that respect social network data and friendship affinity data was collected for two different groups of actors. it informs that central actors are not interested in conforming whereas peripheral actors willing to conform which was expected in asch-type conformity.”

“Asch (1951) found a curvilinear relationship between majority size and conformity such that conformity increased with increases in group size up to a majority of 3 and then leveled off. it was hypothesized here that this effect was due to a perceived contingency of the choices of the others and that if perceived contingency were eliminated, conformity would be a linear function of group size. the procedure in 1 treatment was designed to induce perceived contingency in the others’ choices, that is, that they were following the leader, whereas in the other treatment an attempt was made to induce the perception that the others were responding independently of one another. the data indicate a linear trend under both perceived contingency and perceived independence.”

“An effort was made to validate the findings of 2 previous workers regarding the effect of the size of a group (asch, 1952) and prior experience (mausner, 1953, 1954, 1957) upon conformity in the judgment of the length of lines. the results of asch and mausner were reproduced; there is a curvilinear relationship between size of a group (from 2 to 5) and influence on s to conform to what he believes are the estimates of the lines made by others. prior experience in making judgments of the lines was also found to influence the accuracy of judgment. (psycinfo database record (c) 2012 apa, all rights reserved)”