In the 1950s, a psychologist named Solomon Asch did an important experiment about how people make choices when they are in a group. He wanted to see how much group pressure affected individual decisions.

In this study, 123 male college students were put into groups. Some people in the group, known as confederates, were told to give wrong answers to easy questions about what they saw.

Here are some key things that the experiment found:

• Conformity Rate: About 37% of the students went along with the wrong answers from the group, even when the actual evidence showed they were wrong.

• Overall Conformity: A surprising 75% of the students agreed with the group at least once during the experiment.

• What Affected Conformity:

  • Group Size: When the group had more members, more students followed along. The highest conformity happened with groups of 3 to 5 people.
  • Dissension: If one confederate gave the right answer, the number of students who followed the wrong answer dropped to about 5.5%.

These findings show how strong the influence of a group can be. They highlight how people sometimes choose to agree with the group instead of trusting their own opinions.