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Solomon Asch
Born	September 14, 1907 Warsaw, Poland
Died	February 20, 1996 (aged 88) Haverford, Pennsylvania, USA
Nationality	Polish
Alma mater	College of the City of New York, Columbia University
Known for	Social psychology (Social influence, conformity)
Scientific career
Fields	Psychology (Gestalt, social, cognitive)
Institutions	College of the City of New York Columbia University Swarthmore College Harvard University
Academic advisors	H. E. Garrett
Notable students	Stanley Milgram

Solomon Eliot Asch

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Solomon Asch

Solomon Eliot Asch (September 14, 1907 – February 20, 1996) was an American Gestalt psychologist and pioneer in social psychology. He created seminal pieces of work in impression formation, prestige suggestion, conformity, and many other topics. His work follows a common theme of Gestalt psychology that the whole is not only greater than the sum of its parts, but the nature of the whole fundamentally alters the parts. Asch stated, “Most social acts have to be understood in their setting, and lose meaning if isolated. No error in thinking about social facts is more serious than the failure to see their place and function” (Asch, 1952, p. 61). He is most well-known for his conformity experiments, in which he demonstrated the influence of group pressure on opinions.

Early life

Asch was born in Warsaw, Poland on September, 14 1907. He grew up in a small town,Lowicz. Asch and his family emigrated to the United States in 1920. They lived on the Lower East Side of New York, where many immigrants lived, including Jews, Italians, and Irish.

Education

Asch attended Townsend Harris High School, a very selective high school attached to the City College of New York. After high school, he attended the City College of New York, majoring in both literature and science. He became interested in psychology towards the end of his undergraduate career after reading William James and a few philosophers. In 1928, when he was 21 years old, he received his Bachelor of Science.

Asch went on to pursue his graduate degree at Columbia University. He initially was not very interested in social psychology, but he was interested in anthropology. With the help of Gardner,Lois Murphy, Boas, and Bendict, he investigated how children became members of their culture through a summer fellowship. His master thesis was a statistical analysis of the test scores of 200 children under the supervision of Woodworth. Asch received his Master’s degree in 1930. His doctoral dissertation examined whether all learning curves have the same form; H.E. Garrett assigned the topic to him. He received his PhD in 1932.

Asch was exposed to Gestalt psychology through Gardner Murphy, a young faculty member at Columbia at the time. He became much more interested in Gestalt Psychology after he met and worked closesly with Max Wertheimer, one of the founders of Gestalt Psychology. He later became close friends with Wertheimer.

Family Life

Asch married Florence Miller in 1930, and they had their first and only son, Peter, in 1937. Asch remained married to Florence his entire life.

Career

Asch began his teaching career at Brooklyn College. In 1947, he moved to Swarthmore College, where he stayed for 19 years (1947-1966). Swarthmore was the major home of Gestalt psychology at that time in America. Kohler, Prentice, and Wallach were faculty members at that time as well. In 1966, he left to found the Institute for Cognitive Studies at Rutgers University (1966-1972). In 1972, Asch moved to the University of Pennsylvania and stayed there as a professor of psychology until he retired in 1979. Asch also had visiting posts at Harvard and MIT.

Impression Formation

Asch was interested in how humans form impressions of other human beings. He was intrigued how we are able to easily form impressions of humans even though we have such complex structures. Asch was interested in how impressions of other people were established and if there were any principles that regulated these impressions. Asch concluded that “to know a person is to have a grasp of a particular structure.” He found from his experiments that forming an impression is 1) an organized process, 2) that the characteristics are perceived differently in relation to other characteristics, 3) that central qualities are discovered, causing a distinction between them and peripheral qualities, 4) and that relations of harmony and contradiction are observed.

Asch conducted many experiments in which he asked participants to form an impression of a hypothetical person based on several characteristics said to belong to them. In experiment 1, two groups, A and B, were exposed to a list of exactly the same characteristics except one, cold vs. warm. The list of characteristics given to each group are listed below.

Group A: intelligent-skillful-industrious-warm-determined-practical-cautious

Group B: intelligent-skillful-industrious-cold-determined-practical-cautious

One group of people thus were told that the person was warm and another group of people were told the person is cold instead. Participants then were asked to write a brief description of the impression they formed after hearing these characteristics. The experimenters also produced a check list consisting of pairs of opposite traits that were related to the first list of characteristics they heard. They were asked to indicate which of these traits matched with the hypothetical person that had just been described to them.

Asch found that very different impressions were found based on this one characteristic in the list. In general, the "A" impressions were for more positive than the "B" impressions. Based on the results of the written descriptions of the hypothetical person, the meaning of the other characteristics in the list seemed to change based on if the hypothetical person was described as a "warm" or "cold" person.

Not all qualities were changed by this word. Words, such as “honest,” “strong”, “serious,” and “reliable” were not affected. The words “warm” and “cold” were also shown to be of more importance in forming participant’s impressions than other characteristics. Thus, if another characteristic in this list was changed between two subjects, it might not affect the impression of the person as much as "warm" and "cold." Asch called "warm" and "cold" "central" characteristics.

In another central experiment (Experiment 10), Asch presented participants with four groups of characteristics. Each participant was exposed to the group of words listed below.

Set 1: Quick, Skillful, Helpful

Set 2: Quick, Clumsy, Helpful

Set 3: Slow, Skillful, Helpful

Set 4: Slow, Clumsy, Helpful

Only one characteristic,"helpful,” is the same throughout all of the four sets. Participants were asked 1) which of the other three sets most resemble Set I, and (2) which of the other sets most resembles Set 2.

In 87 percent of the cases, Set 1 was seen most similar with Set 3. In only 13 percent of the cases, people reported Set 1 to be similar to Set 2. Also, Set 2 was said to resemble Set 4 in 85 percent of the cases and only 9 percent of the cases was it said to resemble Set I was the closest. There are more “identical elements” in Set 1 and 2 and in Set 3 and 4. Therefore, the similarity in sets can not be based on the number of shared elements in the set.

Participants also reported that “quick” of set 1 was more similar to “slow” of set 3, and “quick” of set 2 was more similar to “slow” of set 4.

Asch made the following conclusions based on this experiment:

1) The meaning of a characteristic changes based on a change in the “environment” it’s in. Therefore, the meaning of the words “quick” and “slow’ change based on what other words it is presented with or associated with in real life. The meaning of the word “quick” in set 1 is associated more with “one of assurance, of smoothness of movement” while in set 2 the word is associated with “forced quickness, in an effort to be helpful.” In every day life, we perceive a quick, skillful person to be very different than a quick, clumsy person. However, we perceive someone who is quick and skillful and slow as skillful as being more similar and sharing the quality of being more of an expert.

2) The change in the meaning of the characteristic is determined by its relationship with other characteristics. “[Set] I is quick because he is skillful; [Set 2] is clumsy because he is fast” “In [Set] 3 slowness indicates care, prides in work well-done. Slowness in [Set] 4 indicates sluggishness, poor motor coordinate, some physical retardation”

3) “Dynamic consequences are grasped in the interaction of qualities.” Participants considered “quick” and “skillful” and “slow” and “skillful” as characteristics that cooperate together, but they think of “quick” and “clumsy” as characteristics that cancel one another.

Prestige Suggestion

As a result of World War II in the 1940s, Asch and other social psychologists were interested in propaganda. They wondered how do you get people to believe what you want them to believe? How do you get people to believe they should sacrifice for the war effort?

People are persuaded by messages differently based on who is the author of the message. The more prestige the author has, the more likely the person will believe them. Many social psychologists prior to Asch had studied this phenomenon. However, Asch disagreed with many of them and critiqued their interpretations. His main conclusion was that a change in evaluation requires a change in the content and meaning of the response as a result of the change in context. Therefore, the meaning of the message is interpreted differently depending on who is the author of the message. He suggests that participants are not blindly accepting a message based on the author, but rather they are making meaning of the quote based on the author.

Asch called into question the present theory for the underlying psychological process underlying the effect of group forces on the formation and change of opinions and attitudes. Asch critiques the experimental approach of many different psychologists, including Zillig, Moore, Marple, Sherif, Thorndike, and Lorge, in their investigations of evaluation change. Lorge’s and Sherif’s investigation of the effects of ‘prestige’ on the evaluation of statements were investigated in detail.

The same basic procedure was used in all of these papers. A participant makes a judgment about some particular issue. At a later time, they judge the same problem again but with information of how certain groups or prestigious people have evaluated the same problem. If the subject changes his judgment in the same direction as the evaluations of these groups of people or prestigious people, then this is considered a degree of influence that they have exerted on the participant’s judgment.

Lorge Critique

Lorge’s main finding was that ‘prestige’ can alter evaluations of statements of serious political and economic questions.

In his experiment, subjects rated a set of 50 quotations on a 5-point scale of ‘agreement’ or ‘disagreement’ with the statement. The quotes were followed by the names of two public people. Subjects were informed that one of the names was the author of the true source and was asked to select the true author. After about a month, the subjects again rated the same quotation but with the true author only listed below the quotation. Subjects also rated earlier their ‘respect for the political opinions of each of these individuals.’ This was used as a measure of prestige. Lorge found that the participants rated the same statement differently when it was referred to a different author. More specifically, the rating of a statement tended to rise when it was referred to a more ‘prestigious’ author.

One of Lorge’s main conclusions is that an unchanged object of judgment undergoes change of evaluation. Therefore, the prestige of the author is viewed as acting arbitrarily on the statement regardless of the content or merit of the statement.

Asch, however, reinterprets Lorge’s findings and suggests that, “a change in the object of judgment, rather than in the judgment of the object" (Asch, 1940) He suggests that a person will redefine the object of judgment based on the content of the evaluations.

In evidence of his claims, Asch conducted an experiment in which college students read statements with the name of one author below each statement. They were instructed to describe what the statement meant to them. Two groups of students read the same statements but with different authors associated with them.

The main finding was that there was a ‘cognitive reorganization’ of the statement based on what was understood about the author of the statement. Participant’s felt the meaning of the quote differed depending on who wrote the statement.

For example, the following quote was presented to both groups of subjects:“Only the willfully blind can fail to see that the old style capitalism of a primitive freebooting period is gone forever. The capitalism of complete laissez-faire, which thrived on low wages and maximum profits for minimum turnover, which rejected collective bargaining ad fought against justified public regulation of the competitive process, is a thing of the past.” When participants thought that Bridges was the author, they interpreted the passage to be an “expression of the accomplishments of labor in the face of opposition from capital and contained a resolve to defend these gains from attack.” However, when Johnston was the author, they interpreted the passage to be “a perspective of policy in the interest of business, especially of ‘enlightened’ business.”

Another major point that Asch makes is that participants are not completely blind in the experiment and making arbitrary choices based on this bias. Asch claims that participants were acting reasonable in their change of evaluation of the judgment because the context of the judgment and thus the meaning of the judgment had changed. Lorge, however, suggested that if the participants were behaving logical, their evaluations should have remained the same despite the change in author.

Sherif Critique

Muzafer Sherif conducted an experiment, very similar to Lorge, in which he investigated how prestige affects the evaluation of literary materials. College students were asked to rank a set of prose passages according to their literary quality. Each passage also included the name of a well-known author. However, all of the passages were actually written by one author. Participants rated the authors earlier in terms of their literary standing. Sherif found that passages that were identified with highly acclaimed authors received higher rankings.

Asch suggested that Sherif’s results could be largely influenced from the envrionment of a laboratory experiment. Because the experiment was designed to have each of the passages have very few differences between them, participants were faced with a dilemma when asked to distinguish between them. The experimenter and other neighboring participants may appear to find the task obvious, so the participant attends to any clues that might help him make the decision. In fear of looking ridiculous, the participant might now approach the task as “ ‘Which of these am I expected to like and dislike?” With the only information that varies being the author, the participant might make conclusions about the quotes based on this one piece of information that varies.

Conformity Experiments

Asch is most well-known for his conformity experiment. His main finding was that group pressure can change opinion, of even obvious facts. He attributed his research on group conformity to an experience he had as a child growing up in Poland. When Asch stayed up late to participate in his first Passover, he witnessed his grandmother setting out an extra glass of wine out on the table. When Asch asked who would be drinking that glass of wine, his uncle replied that it was for the prophet Elijah. Asch was “filled with the sense of suggestion and expectation” and believed he saw the level of wine in the glass decrease slightly.

Asch wanted to examine throughout his experiments to 1) What extent do social forces alter people's opinions? and also 2) Which aspect of the group influence is most important-the size of the majority or the unanimity?

Asch's conformity experiment was conducted using 123 male participants who were told that they would be part of an experiment in visual judgment. Each participant was put into a group with 5 to 7 "confederates" (people who knew the true aims of the experiment, but were introduced as participants to the naive "real" participant). The participants were shown a card with a line on it, followed by another card with 3 lines on it labeled a, b, and c. The participants were then asked to say which line matched the line on the first card in length. Each line question was called a "trial". The "real" participant answered last or penultimately. For the first two trials, the subject would feel at ease in the experiment, as he and the other "participants" gave the obvious, correct answer. However, after the fourth trial, all of the confederates respond with the clearly wrong answer at certain points such that in 12 of the 18 trials they all say the wrong answer. There were 18 trials in total and the confederates answered incorrectly for 12 of them, these 12 were known as the "critical trials." The participant could thus either ignore the majority and go with his own senses or he could go along with the majority and ignore the clearly obvious fact. The aim was to see whether the real participant would change his answer and respond the same way as the confederates.

Asch found that a considerable percentage followed the majority. Asch also found that the effectiveness of the group pressure increased significantly from 1 person to 3 people unanimously responding incorrectly. However, there was not much increase after that. He also found that when the participant had a confederate pose as a supporting partner who also responded correctly, the power of the majority to influence the participant decreased substantially.

Meta-analyses suggest that a single additional dissenter dramatically reduces (to 5-10%); that males show around half the effect of females (tested in same-sex groups); and conformity is higher among members of an in group.

Notable Influences

Asch was Stanley Milgram's advisor at Princeton University, and Milgram completed his dissertation on national differences under conformity under Asch. Asch also largely influenced the theory of many other social psychologists, such as Harold Kelley.

End of Life

Asch was disappointed and concerned by the direction social psychology was going in the 1980s. He wrote, "Why do I sense, together with the current expansion, a shrinking of vision, an expansion of surface rather than depth, a failure of imagination?....Why is not social psychology more exciting, more human in the most usual sense of that term? To sum up, is this discipline perhaps on the wrong track?" (Asch, p. x) Asch was worried that social psychologists were not asking the deeper questions that would help the world improve. Asch died at the age of 88 on February 21, 1996 in his home in Haverford, Pa.

Work

Asch F. ( 1989). Letter to Irvin Rock.

Asch S. E. ( 1929). A study of scatter on the Stanford revision of the Binet scale. Unpublished MA thesis.

Asch S. E. ( 1932a). Personality development of Hopi children. Unpublished paper.

Asch S. E. ( 1932b). "An experimental study of variability in learning". Archives of Psychology, 143, 1-55

Asch S. E. ( 1946). "Forming impressions of personality". Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41, 258-290.

Asch S. E. ( 1948). "The doctrine of suggestion, prestige, and imitation in social psychology". Psychological Review, 55, 250-276.

Asch S. E. ( 1952). "Social psychology". Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Asch S. E. ( 1955). "On the use of metaphor in the description of persons". In H. Werner (Ed.), On expressive language (29-38). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.

Asch S. E. ( 1956). "Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority". Psychological Monographs, 70, 1-70.

Asch S. E. ( 1958). "The metaphor: a psychological inquiry". In R. Tagiuri & L. Petrullo (Eds.), Person perception and interpersonal behavior (pp. 86-94), California: Stanford University Press.

Asch S. E. ( 1962). "A problem in the theory of associations". Psychologische Beitrage, 6, 553-563.

Asch S. E. ( 1964). "The process of free recall". In C. Scheerer (Ed.), Cognition: Theory, research, promise (pp. 79-88). New York: Harper and Row.

Asch S. E. ( 1968a). "The doctrinal tyranny of associationism". In T. R. Dixon & D. L. Horton (Eds.), Verbal behavior and general behavior theory (pp. 214-228). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Asch S. E. ( 1968b). "Wolfgang Köhler". American Journal of Psychology, 81, 110-119.

Asch S. E. ( 1969). "A reformulation of the problem of associations". American Psychologist, 24, 92-102.

Asch S. E., Ceraso J., & Heimer W. ( 1960). "Perceptual conditions of association". Psychological Monographs, 74( 3), 1-48.

Asch S. E., & Ebenholtz S. M. ( 1962a). "The principle of associative symmetry". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 106, 135-163.

Asch S. E., & Ebenholtz S. M. ( 1962b). "The process of free recall: evidence for non-associative factors in acquisition and retention". Journal of Psychology, 54, 3-31.

Asch S. E., Hay J., & Mendoza R. ( 1960). "Perceptual organization in serial rote-learning". American Journal of Psychology, 73, 177-198.

Asch S. E., & Lindner M. ( 1963). "A note on strength of association." Journal of Psychology, 55, 199-209.

Asch S. E., & Prentice W. C. H. ( 1958). "Paired association with related and unrelated pairs of nonsense figures". American Journal of Psychology, 71, 247-254.

Asch S. E., & Witkin H. A. ( 1948a). "Studies in space orientation: I. Perception of the upright with displaced visual fields". Journal of Experimental Psychology, 38, 325-337.

Asch S. E., & Witkin H. A. ( 1948b). "Studies in space orientation: II. Perception of the upright with displaced visual fields and with body tilted". Journal of Experimental Psychology, 38, 455- 477.