Franzen, Axel; Mader, Sebastian (2023). The power of social influence: A replication and extension of the Asch experiment. PLoS ONE, 18(11), e0294325. Public Library of Science 10.1371/journal.pone.0294325
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In this paper, we pursue four goals: First, we replicate the original Asch experiment with five confederates and one naïve subject in each group (N = 210). Second, in a randomized trial we incentivize the decisions in the line experiment and demonstrate that monetary incentives lower the error rate, but that social influence is still at work. Third, we confront subjects with different political statements and show that the power of social influence can be generalized to matters of political opinion. Finally, we investigate whether intelligence, self-esteem, the need for social approval, and the Big Five are related to the susceptibility to provide conforming answers. We find an error rate of 33% for the standard length-of-line experiment which replicates the original findings by Asch (1951, 1955, 1956). Furthermore, in the incentivized condition the error rate decreases to 25%. For political opinions we find a conformity rate of 38%. However, besides openness, none of the investigated personality traits are convincingly related to the susceptibility of group pressure.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
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Division/Institute: |
03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Institute of Sociology |
UniBE Contributor: |
Franzen, Axel, Mader-Eiler, Sebastian |
Subjects: |
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology |
ISSN: |
1932-6203 |
Publisher: |
Public Library of Science |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Pubmed Import |
Date Deposited: |
30 Nov 2023 14:13 |
Last Modified: |
03 Dec 2023 02:32 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1371/journal.pone.0294325 |
PubMed ID: |
38019779 |
BORIS DOI: |
10.48350/189635 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/189635 |
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