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A Nonconformist Account of the Asch Experiments: Values, Pragmatics, and Moral Dilemmas
Bert H. Hodges and Anne L. Geyer
Pers Soc Psychol Rev 2006 10: 2
DOI: 10.1207/s15327957pspr1001_1
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Copyright 2006 by
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Anne L. Geyer
Department of Psychology
Florida State University
This article offers a new approach to Asch's (1956) influential studies relating
physical and social perception. Drawing on research on values, conversational
pragmatics, cross-cultural comparisons, and negotiation, the authors challenge the
normative assumptions that have led psychologists to interpret the studies in terms
of conformity. A values-pragmatics account is offered that suggests that participants attempt to realize multiple values (e.g., truth, social solidarity) in an inherently frustrating situation by tacitly varying patterns of dissent and agreement to
communicate larger scale truths and cooperative intentions. Alternative theories
(e.g., embarrassment, attribution) are compared and empirical implications of the
values-pragmatics account are evaluated. The possibility of multiple strategies promoting group survival and the proper role of moral evaluation in social psychological research are considered.
bert.hodges@gordon.edu
Number of
Assents
26
8
10
12
6
8
2
4
10
6
6
2
0
24
7
8
14
5
6
6
3
11
5
5
3
5
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Note. 1956 results are based on three studies, including data from
1951 study.
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hardly ever agree with the majority (about 5% of agreeing answers). If we accept Gilbert's (1991) claim that it
is cognitively more difficult to reject the claims of others than to accept them, then the frequency of dissent in
Asch's studies is even more impressive. Thus, instead
of appearing in chapters on conformity found in virtually every social psychology textbook, Asch's studies
might better appear in a chapter that never appears, one
entitled truth. Asch (1990) himself lamented the failure of social psychologists to appreciate "the love of
truth as a psychological reality, and the power it can
command" (p. 55).
Although we have emphasized truth-telling dissent,
Asch's studies showed the effects of social influence.
There is evidence that Asch was puzzled and dismayed
by these "errors" (Gleitman, Rozin, & Sabini, 1997).
He (Asch, 1951) went on to discuss two groups of participants, independent and yielding, the 26% who
never agreed with the majority and the 28% who
agreed more than half of the time. Most commentators
since Asch (1951) have restricted their focus to the
agreeing responses (Friend et al., 1990). We want to
draw attention to the other half of the participants not
highlighted by Asch or later researchers. Ironically,
they might be considered the typical participants, those
who (on average) dissent from the group nine times
(75%) and agree three times (25%). Why would someone do this?
Behind this question lies a deeper one, a normative
one that is at the heart of this article. Was Asch right to
assume that an individual's moral obligation in the situation is to "call it as he sees it" without consideration of
what others say? Do the occasional agreements of participants with erroneous others represent an epistemic
or ethical failure? Despite the number and diversity of
the studies that have followed up Asch's seminal studies, none that we know of have questioned Asch's assumptions about the epistemic and moral obligations of
his participants.4 The one possible exception is Donald
Campbell (1961, 1990), whom Asch (1990) acknowledged as the only American psychologist who
"grasped" the "moral dimension" (p. 53) of his work.
We will present Campbell's views in the context of presenting our own alternative account of Asch's studies.
A Values-Pragmatics Account:
Negotiating Complex Demands
Our account begins by considering the multiple
values that obligate participants in the Asch situation,
then turns to the pragmatic context in which participants have to speak (i.e., address the question asked
by the experimenter). We then examine theory and research on cross-cultural issues and mixed-motive negotiations that provide support for the values-pragmatics analysis.
Values
Values, "the vectors that we designate with the
terms right and wrong" (Asch, 1952, p. 357) provided
the implicit framework for Asch's own analysis of the
situation he created. The situation confronted participants with competing "forces" (Asch, 1956). Speaking
the truth of what one saw was good, but consensus was
"a malignant sociological process" that "spreads error
and confusion" (Asch, 1952, p. 495-496).5
Although succeeding generations of social psychologists have not emphasized the moral character of the
Asch situation or the "power of truth" in it, they have
shared Asch's normative stance in evaluating the behavior of participants. They have assumed a "zero-tolerance
norm" (Krueger & Funder, 2004): Agreement on even a
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Pragmatics
Asch's (1951) experimental situation was a conversation of a special sort: Participants listened to others-an experimenter with a seemingly simple request,
and other participants who frequently said very strange
things-and then had to speak in a highly constrained
way in answer to them.
Pragmatics, which is grounded in values according
to Grice (1991), is the study of the contextual appropriateness of what is spoken and understood (Clark, 1985;
Givon, 1989). Asch (1956) claimed that by agreeing to
be in the experiment, participants obligate themselves
to speak truthfully to the experimenter. Truth is a value
that participants must acknowledge (Brown &
Levinson, 1987; Grice, 1975), but Asch (1956) overlooked the fact that the participant must in the same utterance also say what is appropriate for other participants. What is best to say in a tense or strange situation,
one marked by sharp disagreement or incredulity, is
not so simple as saying what one would say in a less
contentious and more familiar situation. Given this
state of affairs, it is not at all clear that the right thing to
do is to repeat on each trial what one would have said
without regard to what others are saying. Consistent
contradiction of this sort might suggest the speaker is
merely disagreeable, arrogant, or ignorant.
Rather than understand the participant's dilemma
as being tempted to stray from the truth (Asch's analysis), we could think of it in the following way: How
can participants speak the truth about their situation
in a way that honors their personal integrity (i.e., their
own perception) and that is sensitive to and respectful
5
Pragmatic Resources
Thus far we have indicated why participants in an
Asch situation might have good reason to acknowledge the views of others even when they disagree
with them. What resources for pragmatic inventiveness are available to participants to communicate
such an acknowledgment? One example of such inventiveness is illustrated in an anecdote Asch (1951)
reported. A participant who always dissented "announced" all disagreeing answers in the form of
"Three, sir," but did not do so when everyone gave
the correct answer. It is likely these formalities are an
implied message to his peers that he feels he cannot
help disagreeing with them because he is bound by
his obligation to the experimenter, the authority figure who has brought them all together. Although such
an anecdote is interesting, it is difficult to assess the
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in tension with one another. Negotiation of this frustrating situation requires a heterarchical juggling (i.e.,
balancing) of values to maintain the integrity of the
system as a whole. We hypothesized that participants
implicitly treat the experiments as a conversation in
which individual participants tacitly vary their answers
over time as a pragmatic expression of the truth of their
situation, and as a signal of their acknowledgment of
disagreement and their openness to further conversation. Further, we posited that different people might
vary in their sensitivity to various values, such that
their joint actions would yield a more accurate and
adaptive representation of the situation as a whole than
is possible for any individual's actions.
Asch's experiments are marked by multiple ironies.
One, already noted, is the "widespread, even fantastic
misconception, that Asch was attempting to demonstrate the prevalence of conformity" (Friend et al.,
1990, p. 30). A second is Campbell's (1990) observation that psychologists too readily see themselves as
seekers and purveyors of truth, although too readily describing those they study as conformists. A third irony
is the fact that the average participants in Asch's studies have been overlooked. If people were the conformists that social psychologists take them to be, fearful of
the scorn or ostracism of the majority, or the moral
cowards that Asch implies they are, why would the typical participant dissent 75% of the time? A final irony
is that Asch was able to see that his own use of false information (i.e., his confederates' answers) was part of a
larger quest for truth, but was apparently unable to see
that his participants might be doing something quite
similar (Hodges, 2004). Neither he nor later commentators explored the possibility that erroneous answers
participants occasionally give may be locally incorrect
to help them communicate a larger truth.7
70ur rejoinder is not meant to diminish Asch's concern that people sometimes do not speak the truth, not because of some moral sophistication that places truth in the context of other values, but because they are lazy or lack courage.
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evaluates his or her own identity. From this perspective, normative pressure from the group and direct informational influence about the task are less important
than is the information the group provides about the
proper norms by which to evaluate oneself. The social
influence of the group should be greatest when the participant's social identity is at stake; thus, for example, a
participant in an Asch situation is more likely to agree
more with a group of friends than with a group of
strangers.
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needed. Friends can be blunt in a way strangers cannot (Heider, 1958). By contrast, conformity theories
(e.g., Cialdini & Trost, 1998; Graham, 1962) predict
the reverse: They assume increased identification and
cohesion produce greater normative and informational pressures.
Few studies have used friends as participants in
Asch-type experiments, but the evidence appears to favor the values-pragmatics prediction. McKelvey and
Kerr (1988) did two experiments, both of which found
lower mean agreement rates among friends (about .08)
than among strangers (about .25), although the judgments required in their studies may not have been as
clear as Asch's (N. H. Kerr, personal communication,
January 11, 2003).
2. A related hypothesis is that the relative importance of truth-telling and social solidarity will vary
across cultural contexts, as well as across situations
within a culture (public vs. intimate conversations;
Yin, 2002). Based on the pragmatic considerations
contrasting Chinese and American orderings of
truth-in-relationship and truth-in-reference, discussed
earlier, we predict that dissent will be more readily expressed in an American family than in a Chinese one,
especially in public settings, but there might be less
difference or even a reversal in intimate settings that invite expressions of social support.
The most relevant studies were done in Japan.
Whether one views Japan as similar to China (Smith &
Bond, 1999; Triandis, 1995) or more Westernized
(Frager, 1970; Miller & Kanazawa, 2000) would, of
course, lead to differing predictions. Limited evidence
suggests both might be true: One study yielded results
similar to McKelvey and Kerr's (1988) American results; the other found the reverse. Although their manipulation of the friendship variable was weak, Williams and Sogon (1984) found more agreement with
incorrect majorities in intact groups than unacquainted
groups. By contrast, Matsuda (1985) found the least
amount of agreement in uchi (friend) groups (.08) and
the most in soto (stranger) groups (.29) in the conditions most comparable to Asch's situation. In short, the
relationship of friendship to truth-telling and agreement across cultures is complex, but supportive of the
values-pragmatics analysis.
3. Newtson and Czerlinsky (1974) noted the appropriateness of taking the audience being addressed
into account when communicating. In the Asch situation the two most obvious audiences addressed are
the experimenter and the other participants. It follows
from the values-pragmatics account that agreement
with the majority answers will be greatest when the
majority is addressed, least when the experimenter
alone is addressed, and intermediate when both are
addressed together (as in the standard version of the
Asch paradigm).
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were intended to honor all the relevant values and relationships. If, for example, it were shown that pure dissenters cared nothing for their peers, but cared only for
asserting their own view, we might question the narrowness of their moral vision. Third, we speculate that
the biological, social, and moral integrity of communities might best be served by the existence of a diversity
of strategies that honor the multiplicity of values. This
might be a metastrategy, a strength-in-diversity approach. This analysis has affinities for dynamical systems or complexity theory (Kauffman, 1995; Nowak &
Vallacher, 1998), evolutionary dynamics (Caporael &
Baron, 1997; Kenrick, Li, & Butner, 2003), and social
functionalist frameworks (Tetlock, 2002) that deserve
exploration. Finally, these strategies may not vary only
between individuals or subgroups. They could be a set
of functions that would vary within individuals over
time and across tasks.
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