asch

Solomon E. Asch (1907–1996) was a Polish-born American psychologist who helped define social psychology through his pioneering work on conformity and impression formation. Born in Warsaw and later immigrating to the United States, he built a career focused on how social context influences perception, judgment, and behavior. His research emphasized experimental methods for studying social influence and contributed to establishing social psychology as an empirical discipline.

Conformity experiments: In 1951 Asch conducted a series of line-judgment experiments in which participants were placed in groups with several confederates who gave deliberately incorrect answers. On a significant portion of trials, participants conformed to the incorrect majority, even when the correct answer was obvious. The results demonstrated the power of normative social influence in simple perceptual tasks. Variations showed that conformity was affected by factors such as unanimity, group size, and task difficulty; the presence of a dissenter often reduced conformity.

Other work and influence: Asch also studied how people form impressions of others, investigating how a single trait can disproportionately shape overall judgments and how observers integrate information about personality. His work on impression formation and social perception helped shape theories of persuasion, group dynamics, and the methodology of social psychology. His influence extended across psychology and related fields, reinforcing the use of controlled experiments to study everyday social behavior.

Legacy: Asch’s research highlighted the impact of social context on judgment and behavior and remains a foundational reference in discussions of conformity, social influence, and perceptual processes. He passed away in 1996, leaving a lasting mark on the field.