Solomon Asch, a pioneer of social psychology

Solomon Asch is considered one of the pioneers of psychology social, area in which he focused his research. This Polish psychologist emigrated to the United States when he was just a few years old and it was in that country where he completed his school and university training.

He was born in Warsaw (Poland) in 1907. At the age of 13 his family settled in New York. There, Solomon Asch completed his studies and obtained his doctorate in psychology in 1932. Over time, he became known for his original experiments in social psychology. In short, to demonstrate the influence that others can have on our behavior.

While studying at Columbia University, Solomon Asch was advised by Max Wertheimer . This expert in Gestalt psychology had a profound impact on his training. In particular, he aroused great interest in the phenomena of perception, thought and association.

The intellectual development of Solomon Asch

Solomon Asch worked as a psychology professor at Swarthmore College for 19 years. His time at that institution allowed him to establish a strong relationship with Wolfgang Kohler whom he always admired. His theories sparked his interest in research and served as the basis for the experiments that made him famous.

Asch gained enormous fame for such experiments and for the publication of his book, Social psychologyin 1952. There he captures the development of his research and the key concepts of his theory.

At the time, it revolutionized studies of the human mind. He also worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania. He also had a brief stint at Harvard University, where He directed the doctoral thesis of the famous and controversial Stanley Milgram.

Asch’s experiment

Solomon Asch performed a series of experiments that are known under the generic name of “the Asch experiment.” Is about a series of studies that he carried out in 1951 and whose main purpose was to prove that people submit to the power of the groupadopting an attitude of conformity towards it.

The experiment basically consisted of forming a group of between 7 and 9 students. All of them, except one, were accomplices of the investigator. Everyone was presented with two lines and asked to point to the one that was longest for them. The correct answer was very obvious, however The accomplices began to point out the wrong option as the correct one. This fact made the subject evaluated (“non-complicit”) feel strong pressure from the group. to answer against what his logic told him.

Solomon Asch showed that a good part of the experimental subjects ended up joining the majority’s response, despite its obvious erroneousness. Besides, Asch really wondered if the subjects who followed the general “rigged” judgment really did so because they were convinced of the answer they gave.. It was found that no: the number of people who agreed with the majority judgment decreased considerably when they were allowed to express their decision in private. Thus, the influence was manifested above all on conscience and not so much on judgment.

Other aspects of Asch’s experiment

To complement the central study, Solomon Asch introduced some variations. The first change was to introduce a subject (also agreed or rigged) that broke the consensus of the majority. Asch found that the fact that a person previously broke the consensus considerably decreased the number of experimental subjects who bowed or conformed to the mistaken opinion of the majority.

Asch’s experiments, although criticized, provided a different and original vision of how we can be influenced and conditioned by the majority. The truth, in fact, is that he is currently considered one of the most important psychologists in history. Among the awards granted to him, the Award of Distinction for Scientific Contributions from the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1967 stands out..

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