Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
Source: Adapted from Sherif, M. (1936). The psychology of social norms. New York, NY: Harper and Row.
Not all conformity is passive. In the research of Solomon Asch (1955) [38] the judgments that
group members were asked to make were entirely unambiguous, and the influence of the other
people on judgments was apparent. The research participants were male college students who
were told that they were to be participating in a test of visual abilities. The men were seated in
front of a board that displayed the visual stimuli that they were going to judge. The men were
told that there would be 18 trials during the experiment, and on each trial they would see two
cards. The standard card had a single line that was to be judged, and the test card had three lines
that varied in length between about 2 and 10 inches.
Figure 14.12