Solomon Asch, 1907-1996
Solomon E. Asch was a pioneer of social
psychology. Born in Warsaw, Poland, on September 14, 1907, he came to the
United States in 1920 and received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in
1932. His mentor there, Max Wertheimer, was an important early influence
as Asch explored gestalt, relation-oriented approaches to perception,
association, learning, thinking, and metaphor. His principal faculty
appointment was at Swarthmore College, where he spent 19 years working with a
group of psychologists that included Wolfgang Kohler.
The great challenge for social psychology is
to join the rarefied rigor of physical science with the rich complexity of
human life. Asch pointed the way to a balanced and productive blend of
natural and social science, an approach that produced three pioneering and
highly influential experiments and a classic textbook, Social Psychology.
PRESTIGE SUGGESTION
In studying what became known as prestige
suggestion, Asch manipulated the attribution of quotations like "I hold it
that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the
political world as storms are in the physical." American students
agreed more with this quotation when it was attributed to Jefferson than when
it was attributed to Lenin. Behaviorists interpreted this result in terms
of simple associations, but Asch showed that the attribution affected the
meaning of the quotation: Lenin meant blood whereas Jefferson meant
politics. Hence, Asch helped establish the dominant view of contemporary
social psychology: behavior is not a response to the world as it is, but to the
world as perceived.
IMPRESSION FORMATION
Asch's approach put him at odds with the
“behaviorist elementism” dominant in the 1940s and 1950s. In his
experiments on impression formation, Asch showed that the meaning of a
personality trait depended upon other traits attributed to the same
person. For example, the intelligence of a person who is
"intelligent" and "cold" is not the same as the
intelligence of a person who is "intelligent" and “warm”.
Though controversial (especially among advocates of elementist models), the
importance of his results is uncontested. The network of inferences from
one characteristic to another is being studied still; Asch's technique of
comparing impressions generated by descriptions differing in only one
characteristic is still popular.
CONFORMITY
Asch's most famous experiments set a contest
between physical and social reality. His subjects judged unambiguous stimuli –
lines of different lengths – after hearing other opinions offering
incorrect estimates. Subjects were very upset by the discrepancy between
their perceptions and those of others and most caved under the pressure to
conform: only 29% of his subjects refused to join the bogus majority.
This technique was a powerful lens for examining the social construction of
reality, and gave rise to decades of research on conformity. Stanley
Milgram's studies of obedience to authority were inspired directly by Asch's
studies.
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY (1952)
Asch's classic textbook is an eloquent
statement of his vision and ranks among the greatest works in psychology.
He persuasively presents the person as complex but comprehensible, both
socially situated and independent. Asch walks the difficult but
productive middle ground between behaviorism and psychoanalysis, nature and
nurture, elementism and holism, experimentation and naturalistic
observation. This book shaped a generation of social psychologists.
(The current generation may find it a useful antidote to ANOVA-ridden
journals.) While crises in social psychology come and go, this text
remains a sovereign remedy. Some examples:
On method: "If there must be principles
of scientific method, then surely the first to claim our attention is that one
should describe phenomena faithfully and allow them to guide the choice of
problems and procedures."
On scale: "We must see group phenomena
as both the product and condition of actions of individuals."
On culture: "Most social acts have to be
understood in their setting, and lose meaning if isolated. No error in thinking
about social facts is more serious than the failure to see their place and
function."
On complexity: “We cannot be true to a
fragment of man if we are not true, in at least a rudimentary way, to man
himself."
Solomon E. Asch died at the age of 88 on
February 20, 1996.