... of the personal norms. Furthering his study, Sherif found that commencing the experiment with groups of 3 and then asking the participants for their own estimate showed evidence of group conformity. However, Solomon Asch questioned Sherif's results because of the fact that the stimulus (the auto-kinetic effect) was very unambiguous and therefore the answer was uncertain. Asch therefore decided to investigate whether people would be so willing to conform if the stimulus was not ambiguous and the right answer was obvious, but people would give the wrong answer to conform. Asch gave his participants a simple perceptual test where participants had to match line X with a choice of three other lines, one of which would be the same size as X, and state out loud the one that matched. Obviously line X and line a are not the same, but when the stooges (accomplices of the experimenter) agreed that they ...

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