Opinions and Social Pressure

In "Opinions and Social Pressure," Asch describes an to find out the effects of group pressure. First, Asch and his colleagues collect a group of seven to nine young men, all college students, and assembles them in a classroom. The experimenter then explains to them that they will be visually comparing the lengths of three lines. He then shows the group two cards, one with a single vertical line, and the other with three vertical …

…group instead of just one made a difference. It did; the error percentage dropped down to only 9 percent...... According to the author (341). Asch then tried one more variation on his experiment, he gave the subject a partner, and then taking him away about six trials into the experiment, exclaiming that the subject's partner had an appointment with the dean. In these cases, the percentage of errors drastically rose when the subject didn't have a partner.