Solomon Asch facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Solomon Asch
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| Born | September 14, 1907 Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire
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| Died | February 20, 1996 (aged 88) |
| Nationality | Polish-American |
| Alma mater | College of the City of New York, Columbia University |
| Known for | Social psychology (Social influence, conformity), Asch conformity experiments |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychology (Gestalt, social, cognitive) |
| Institutions | College of the City of New York Columbia University Swarthmore College Harvard University |
| Academic advisors | Max Wertheimer |
| Notable students | Stanley Milgram |
Solomon Eliot Asch (born September 14, 1907 – died February 20, 1996) was a Polish-American psychologist. He was a leader in social psychology, which studies how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by others.
Asch was also a Gestalt psychologist. This idea suggests that when we look at something, we see the "whole" first, not just its separate parts. He believed that understanding people means seeing them in their full situation, not just as isolated pieces. Asch is most famous for his experiments on conformity. These experiments showed how much group pressure can change what people think and even what they believe they see.
Contents
Early life and moving to America
Solomon Asch was born in Warsaw, Poland, on September 14, 1907. He grew up in a small town called Łowicz. His family was Polish-Jewish.
In 1920, when Asch was 13, his family moved to the United States. They settled in the Lower East Side of New York City. This area was busy with many immigrants from different countries. His friends called him Shlaym.
Education and learning
When Asch first moved to the United States, he was shy. He didn't speak English well because he grew up in Poland. He went to a public school, P.S. 147, for 6th grade. It was hard for him to understand lessons because of the language barrier. He learned English by reading books by Charles Dickens.
Later, Asch went to Townsend Harris High School, a special high school connected to the City College of New York. After high school, he studied literature and science at the City College of New York. He became interested in psychology after reading books by William James and other thinkers. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in 1928 when he was 21.
Asch continued his studies at Columbia University. He was first interested in anthropology, which is the study of human societies and cultures. He later became very interested in Gestalt psychology. This happened after he met and worked with his advisor, Max Wertheimer. Wertheimer was one of the founders of Gestalt psychology. Asch and Wertheimer became close friends. Asch earned his master's degree in 1930 and his PhD in 1932.
Family life
Solomon Asch met Florence Miller in a library in New York City. They got married in 1930. People described their relationship as "easy" and "good-humored." Asch and Florence were married for their entire lives.
They had one son, Peter, in 1937. Peter Asch became a professor of economics. He married Ruth Zindler and had two sons, Eric and David. Sadly, Peter died at age 52, before his parents and wife.
Career and teaching
Asch started his teaching career at Brooklyn College. In 1947, he moved to Swarthmore College. He stayed there for 19 years, until 1966. Swarthmore was a main center for Gestalt psychology in the United States at that time. Other famous psychologists like Wolfgang Köhler and Hans Wallach also taught there.
While at Swarthmore, Asch also worked at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study for two years (1958-1960). There, Stanley Milgram, who later became a very famous psychologist, worked as his research assistant.
In 1966, Asch left to start the Institute for Cognitive Studies at Rutgers University. In 1972, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania. He taught psychology there until he retired in 1979. He remained a professor emeritus until his death in 1996. Asch also taught as a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT.
Key research and findings
How we form impressions of others
Asch was very interested in how people form ideas about others. He wondered how we can easily create an impression of someone, even though people are complex. He wanted to find out if there were rules for how these impressions are made. Asch believed that "to know a person is to have a grasp of a particular structure."
He showed through his experiments that forming an impression involves these steps:
- It's an organized process.
- A person's traits are seen differently depending on their other traits.
- Some traits are "central" (more important), and others are "peripheral" (less important).
- We notice if traits fit together well or if they seem to contradict each other.
Asch did many experiments where he asked people to imagine a person based on a list of traits.
Central traits in forming impressions
In one experiment, Asch gave two groups of people almost the same list of traits for a made-up person. The only difference was one word: "warm" or "cold."
- Group A: intelligent-skillful-industrious-warm-determined-practical-cautious
- Group B: intelligent-skillful-industrious-cold-determined-practical-cautious
People were asked to describe the person. Asch found that the word "warm" or "cold" made a huge difference. Impressions from Group A were much more positive than from Group B. The meaning of other traits on the list seemed to change based on whether the person was "warm" or "cold."
However, some words like "honest" or "strong" were not affected. Asch called "warm" and "cold" "central" traits. This meant they were very important for understanding the person. Other traits, like "polite" or "blunt," were "peripheral." Changing these wouldn't affect the overall impression as much.
Order of traits in impressions
Asch also found that the order in which traits were presented changed how people saw someone. For example, he showed people one of these lists:
- A. intelligent-industrious-impulsive-critical-stubborn-envious
- B. envious-stubborn-critical-impulsive-industrious-intelligent
List A starts with good qualities and ends with less desirable ones. List B is the opposite. People saw person A as a capable person with some flaws that didn't hide their good points. But they saw person B as someone whose good points were hidden by serious problems. The meaning of words like "impulsive" and "critical" even changed depending on which list they were in.
How similarity affects impressions
In another experiment, Asch showed people four groups of traits. Only one trait, "helpful," was the same in all groups.
- Set 1: Quick, Skillful, Helpful.
- Set 2: Quick, Clumsy, Helpful.
- Set 3: Slow, Skillful, Helpful.
- Set 4: Slow, Clumsy, Helpful.
Participants were asked which other set was most like Set 1, and then which was most like Set 2. Most people (87%) said Set 1 was most like Set 3. And most people (85%) said Set 2 was most like Set 4.
This was interesting because Set 1 and Set 2 actually shared more identical words ("Quick," "Helpful"). But people felt Set 1 and Set 3 were more similar. Asch concluded that the meaning of a trait changes based on the other traits around it. For example, "quick" in Set 1 (with "skillful") meant smooth and assured. But "quick" in Set 2 (with "clumsy") meant a forced quickness. People combine traits to form an overall impression.
Prestige and persuasion
During World War II, Asch and other psychologists studied propaganda. They wanted to know how to make people believe certain messages. They noticed that people are often more persuaded by a message if the person who said it has high "prestige" (is well-respected).
Asch believed that when a respected person says something, the meaning of the message itself changes for the listener. It's not just that people blindly accept it. Instead, they interpret the message differently based on who said it.
He looked closely at studies by other psychologists, like Lorge and Sherif. These studies often showed that if a statement was linked to a famous or respected person, people would rate it more positively.
Asch's view on Lorge's findings
Lorge found that "prestige" could change how people judged political and economic statements. He thought that the prestige of the author simply made the statement seem more valuable, no matter what it said.
Asch disagreed. He said that the "object of judgment" (the statement) itself changed meaning. He believed that people would redefine the statement based on what they knew or believed about the person who said it.
For example, Asch showed students a quote about capitalism. When they thought a union leader named Bridges said it, they saw it as a victory for workers. But when they thought a business leader named Johnston said it, they saw it as a business policy. Asch argued that people were being logical. The meaning of the quote changed because the context (who said it) changed.
Asch's view on Sherif's findings
Muzafer Sherif did an experiment where students ranked passages of writing. Each passage had a famous author's name, but all passages were actually written by the same person. Sherif found that passages linked to highly respected authors got higher rankings.
Asch suggested that this might happen because the experiment was set up in a way that made it hard for participants to tell the passages apart. If they felt confused, and the only thing that changed was the author's name, they might use that clue to decide what they were "expected" to like.
Conformity experiments
Asch is most famous for his Asch conformity experiments. His main discovery was that pressure from a group can change a person's opinion and even what they think they see. He found that many people would go along with the group, even if the group was clearly wrong.
Asch wanted to know:
- How much do social pressures change people's opinions?
- What part of group influence is most important: the size of the group or if everyone in the group agrees?
Asch's experiment involved 123 young men, aged 17 to 25. They were told it was a study on visual judgment. Each real participant was put into a group with 6 to 8 "confederates." These confederates were actors who knew the experiment's true purpose.
The group was shown a card with one line on it. Then they saw another card with three lines, labeled 1, 2, and 3. Participants had to say which of the three lines matched the first line in length. The real participant always answered last or second to last.
For the first few turns, everyone gave the correct answer. But then, in 12 out of 18 turns, all the confederates purposely gave the wrong answer. The real participant then had a choice: either ignore the group and say the correct answer, or go along with the group and give the clearly wrong answer.
Asch found that:
- About 23% of the participants always stuck to their own correct answer.
- About 4.8% always went along with the wrong group answer.
- The rest of the participants sometimes conformed to the group and sometimes gave the correct answer.
Asch also found that the group's pressure became much stronger when there were 3 people giving the wrong answer. But adding more people after that didn't increase the pressure much. He also learned that if just one confederate gave the correct answer, the power of the group to influence the participant dropped a lot.
Asch shared that his own childhood experiences influenced his studies on conformity. He remembered being seven years old during Passover. His grandmother poured an extra glass of wine for the prophet Elijah. When he asked if Elijah would really drink from it, his uncle told him to watch closely. Asch felt "filled with a sense of suggestion and expectation" and "thought he saw the level of wine in the cup drop just a bit." This early experience of conforming to what he expected to see led him to study conformity later in life.
Metaphors and language
Asch studied metaphors in many languages, like Old Testament Hebrew, Homeric Greek, Chinese, and Thai. He found that sensory words (like "cold") often had similar meanings when used to describe personality traits across different languages. He concluded that metaphors and language show how people try to understand the true qualities of people or things.
Influences on other psychologists
Solomon Asch was the advisor for Stanley Milgram at Princeton University. Milgram's famous work on obedience was influenced by Asch. Asch also had a big impact on the ideas of many other social psychologists, like Harold Kelley.
Asch's lasting impact
Asch's research left four important ideas that are still used in social psychology today:
- He believed that social interaction involves people combining information about group rules, others' views, and their own feelings about being part of a group.
- Asch stressed that independent thinking and disagreement are vital for groups to work well. He thought that by discussing differences, we can understand our own beliefs better.
- He suggested that conforming (going along with the group) and not conforming (resisting the group) are not just opposites. They might be caused by different psychological processes.
- Asch also thought that group influence could actually change how people see things.
In the 1980s, Asch felt worried about the direction social psychology was taking. He thought it was focusing too much on small details and not enough on bigger, more important questions that could help improve the world.
End of life
Solomon Asch passed away at the age of 88 on February 20, 1996. He died at his home in Haverford, Pennsylvania.
See also
In Spanish: Solomon Asch para niños
- Belief perseverance
- Milgram experiment
- Stanley Milgram
Images for kids
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Solomon Asch
