Are You Eager To Conform?

How most of us are willing to submit to the leading opinion in a group.

If you are heavily influenced by the group you take part in, to the extent that you are willing to submit to the leading opinion in the group, we talk of conformity. In the 1950s, pioneering Polish-American social psychologist Solomon Asch (1907–1996) conducted now famous experiments on conformity which played out differently from what he thought they would. Asch hypothesized that people would not conform to the opinion of a group if the objective evidence showed that the opinion was a clear-cut falsehood. It was surprising to Asch that the opposite turned out to be true.

Try looking up some videos of these experiments — which have been replicated by others numerous times — and be amazed by what happens. The general idea of the experiments is the following. A group of people is shown a first card with a line drawn on it of a certain length. Then another card is shown, with three lines on it, all of different lengths. Only one of the three lines equals the line on the first card in length. The group members are asked one by one which of three lines matches the first card’s line. As you can see in the image below, the answer is pretty obvious.

The trick of the experiment is that there is only one test subject in the group, who is unaware of being that only one. The subject is usually seated at the far right side of the group and the researcher asks the person on the far left side first which of the three lines matches the line on the first card. Let’s say the obviously correct answer is — as in the above image — answer C. All persons of the group are what they call “confederates”, usually students cooperating with the researcher, but at least people who are acting on behalf of the study taking place. The real test subject is never aware of the confederates being in on the conspiracy. The confederate on the far left answers, “A”. The confederate sitting next to him also says “A”, and so on. Until we meet the real test subject at the right side of the group. What will the participant answer, the obviously correct answer “C”, or will they answer in harmony with the group, and say “A”? It turns out that most people will start out with a bit of a chuckle and give the correct answer. At least for the first few rounds. Multiple cards with three lines are held up by the researcher and each time all confederates answer wrongly. In the videos, you can see the test subject deeply wondering why the others give the so blatantly wrong answers. But after a few rounds of being shown different cards, many grow tired of opposing the groups’ opinion. There are people who keep resisting and stick with their own (correct) views, but most participants collapse — and faster than you’d think. It’s funny and tragic at the same time to see that some don’t even look at the cards anymore, they simply repeat what the people before them say.

If you’re used to Agile ways of working in your organization, you’ll probably know the practice of Poker Planning. A team will estimate the effort it will take to complete a piece of work using cards the size of playing cards, with numbers on them; 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, and 100. This range sort of resembles the Fibonacci sequence — for those familiar with math — in which each number is the sum of the two previous numbers (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, etc.).

Poker Planning Cards

Each team member will pick a card with a number that they think matches the relative amount of work needed to complete a certain set of tasks. The team will usually start out with some sort of example piece of work, which they will give a number, for instance, 3. Every next set of work that is being discussed, is compared against the first, against the 3. So, if a piece of work seems to be twice as much work as the first one, the team members might pick a 5 or an 8, after which a discussion usually follows about why some people chose a 5 and others an 8, and some might have picked a completely different number, like 3 or 13, which is food for conversation. The main aspect of this ritual of Poker Planning is that all team members show the card they picked to the other team members at the very same time. This part of the ritual is directly related to the research of Asch. With it, the team prevents its members from conforming mindlessly to the opinion of others — and thus, to the opinion of the quickest, loudest, or most experienced person in the group.

If you are interested in stories like these and more, you can buy Essential Psychology for Modern Organizations from Amazon and other bookstores: https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Psychology-Modern-Organizations-scientifically/dp/B08NP12D77/

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