In 1951, Solomon Asch conducted an experiment. He brought 8 college students into a room and told them they were going to be tested on their perception. They would be shown one card with a line of a certain length and another card with multiple choice options. Which one was the same length as the first card? One by one, they would give their answer out loud.1
The thing is, though, out of these 8 students, only one of them was being studied. The rest were in on the experiment. Asch really wanted to study conformity and social pressure. The 7 who were in on it were told to intentionally give the wrong answer for the last 12 out of 18 questions. The one being studied was always asked for their answer last or second to last.2
It’s not a hard question – what do you see? It’s not a high stakes situation – no grades or money changed hands. Being a scientist, Asch also did a control test – a version of the experiment where everyone told the truth. In that one, the student gave the right answer more than 99% of the time. In the actual experimental group, the right answer was given 63.2% of the time. That means that almost 37% of the answers were wrong! If you’re wondering how many stood firm and gave the right answer every time no matter what, that was only 1 in 4 of them. The folks who always went with the crowd? 5%. But out of everyone, 75% answered wrong at least once.3
[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.