Debunking The Myth That Conformity Is Irrational

Issue 165: We revisit the famous conformity studies from Solomon Asch and explain that most people have learned the wrong lessons about conformity

In a classic moment of comedy history, the TV show Candid Camera had actors reveal the human tendency for conformity. You can see unsuspecting participants enter an elevator and quickly conform to a new set of rules—like facing the back or turn from side to side—as they observe the actions of others. It reveals, to great comic effect, the absurd degrees to we will mimic complete strangers.

This moment in comic history was inspired by a famous set of studies by social psychologist Solomon Asch at Swarthmore College in the 1950s. On the bucolic campus grounds just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he conducted a series of experiments that seemed to expose a troubling side of human nature: a disturbing tendency to conform even when it makes no rational sense.

Asch invited groups of college students to complete a strikingly simple task. All they had to do was match the length of a line to one of three comparison lines. It was incredibly simple. You can try it yourself below: look at the line on the left and try to determine which line on the right is identical in length.

The answer is C. Or is it?

Did you get it right? When students completed the task alone, they almost never made mistakes.

But Asch added a twist. In group settings, everyone except for one real participant was secretly in on the experiment. At key moments, these stooges deliberately chose obviously wrong answers—and the real participant, answering last, had to decide whether to trust their own eyes or go along with the crowd.

In the videos, you can see the participant squirming uncomfortably as he is struggling with the decision to conform: does he trust his own lying eyes or those of his peers?

The results were startling: 76% of participants conformed at least once! And on average, people went along with the group about a third of the time.

It looked like a dramatic indictment of human irrationality.

Crazy, right?

But if we stop the story there, we miss a far more interesting and hopeful truth…

Conformity Can Be Rational

Some conformity in Asch’s experiments was driven by what psychologists call normative influence: people wanted to fit in and avoid social discomfort. We know this because when participants could write down their answers anonymously, conformity rates plummeted. (BTW, this is a clever trick if you want to reduce conformity in groups—have them write down their opinions privately!)

Public pressure matters.

Yet not all conformity is about fitting in with the crowd. Much of the time, it’s a smart, rational response to uncertainty. There is extensive research in the past 70 years that has revealed the function of conformity.