Solomon Eliot Asch (September 14, 1907 – February 20, 1996) was a Polish-American Gestalt psychologist and pioneer in social psychology. He conducted seminal research on impression formation, prestige suggestion, conformity, and many other topics. His work reflects a common theme of Gestalt psychology that the whole is not only different from the sum of its parts, but the nature of the whole fundamentally alters the understanding of 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 is most well known for his conformity experiments, in which he demonstrated the influence of group pressure on opinions. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Asch as the 41st most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
Early life
Asch was born in Warsaw, Poland, on September 14, 1907, to a Polish-Jewish family. He grew up in a small town of Łowicz in central Poland. In 1920, at age 13, Asch emigrated with his family to the United States. They lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a dense neighborhood populated with Jewish, Italian and Irish immigrants. His friends called him Shlaym. Solomon is the English translation of the Hebrew name Shlomo, and Asch's nickname comes from the Yiddish version of the Hebrew name, Shloime (pronounced shloy-meh).
Education
Having been a shy child who was brought up in Poland, Asch initially did not speak English fluently. He attended sixth grade at his neighborhood's public school, P.S. 147. Because of the language barrier, Asch had difficulty understanding his teacher. He, however, learned English by reading Charles Dickens. Asch later attended Townsend Harris High School, a very selective high school attached to the City College of New York. After high school, he attended City College, majoring in both literature and science. He became interested in psychology towards the end of his undergraduate career after reading the work of William James and a number of other philosophers. In 1928, when he was 21 years old, he received his Bachelor of Science.
Family life
Asch met Florence Miller in a library on East Broadway on the lower East Side in New York City. They married in 1930. Their relationship was reported as being "easy" and "good-humored" (Rock, p. 5).
Career
Asch began his teaching career at Brooklyn College in 1932, after he earned his Ph.D. He left Brooklyn College for the New School for Social Research in 1943, where he replaced his mentor Max Wertheimer, who had recently died. In 1947, he moved to Swarthmore College, where he stayed until 1966.
While at Swarthmore, Asch served for two years (1958–1960) as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. At the Institute, Stanley Milgram, who later became a prominent social psychologist, worked as Asch's research assistant.
Dorothy Dinnerstein recruited Asch to leave Swarthmore for Rutgers University and become, in 1967, the first director of Rutgers's Institute for Cognitive Studies. In 1972, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania, teaching as a professor of psychology until he retired in 1979, and was a Professor Emeritus. Asch also had visiting posts at Harvard and MIT.
Work
Impression formation
Asch was interested in how humans form impressions of other human beings. He was intrigued how humans are able to easily form impressions of others despite complex structures. He specifically was interested in how impressions of other people were established and if there were any principles which regulated these impressions. Asch concluded "to know a person is to have a grasp of a particular structure". He demonstrated through his experiments that forming an impression has the following elements:
- it is an organized process,
- the characteristics are perceived differently in relation to other characteristics,
- central qualities are discovered, causing a distinction between them and peripheral qualities,
- 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.
Asch called into question the present theory for the underlying psychological process concerning the effect of group forces on the formation and change of opinions and attitudes. He critiqued 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 in one of Asch's articles.
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 were 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 participants rated the same statement differently when it was referred to a different author with the rating tending to rise when it was referred to a more "prestigious" author.
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 and fought against justified public regulation of the competitive process, is a thing of the past." When participants thought that Bridges (a well-known union leader) 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 (president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at the time) was the author, they interpreted the passage to be "a perspective of policy in the interest of business, especially of 'enlightened' business". Asch conducted a very similar and classic study with participants reading statements either attributed to Jefferson or Lenin.
Asch suggested that Sherif's results could be largely influenced from the environment 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. His main finding was that peer pressure can change opinion and even perception. Asch found the majority of the participants succumbed at least once to the pressure and went with the majority.
Asch found that 23% of all subjects successfully withstand this form of social pressure, 4.8% completely succumb, while the remainder conform to the majority's manifestly incorrect opinion only in some experimental rounds. Asch suggested that this procedure created a doubt in the participants' mind about the seemingly obvious answer. Participants reported that the correct but rejected line was almost but not quite equal to the standard line. 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 one confederate responded correctly, the power of the majority to influence the subject decreased substantially. Early in life, Asch succumbed to social pressure, an experience which led him to investigate conformity later in life.
Metaphors
Asch looked at metaphors in a variety of different languages, such as Old Testament Hebrew, Homeric Greek, Chinese, Thai, Malayalam, and Hausa. He found that there was a similar meaning for the sensory term, such as "cold" in English, and the corresponding personality trait. He concluded that metaphors, and thus language, reflects a person's attempt to understand the true properties of a person or object.
Unitary and nonunitary associations
Asch showed that simple properties would enter into associations much easier, when they are part of the same unit than when they are from different units.
Notable influences
in
Asch was Stanley Milgram's advisor at Princeton University. Milgram, under Asch's supervision, completed his dissertation on national/cultural differences in conformity. Asch also influenced the ideas of other social psychologists, including that of Harold Kelley.
Legacy
According to Levine (1999), Asch's research has led to four critical ideas that persist in social influence research. First, Asch believed that social interaction reflects the ability of individual people to synthesize information about group norms, the viewpoints of others and their own perceptions of themselves as group members. This point of view has been manifested in at least two important theories (social identity theory and self-categorization theory), and has been a source of inspiration for the work of many social psychologists.
Second, Asch emphasized that independent thought and disagreement among group members is a cornerstone of group functioning. He believed that only by settling our differences with other group members can we actually understand the shortcomings of our own beliefs.Sourcf judgement), and how badly the person wants to be accepted by the group (distortion of action). Although these exact terms have not been directly ported over to the literature, researchers such as Serge Moscovici and Charlan Nemeth have adopted the perspective that majority and minority influence are moderated by multiple processes. Asch was worried that social psychologists were not asking the deeper questions that would help change and improve the world.
End of life
Asch died at the age of 88 on February 20, 1996, in his home in Haverford, Pennsylvania.