Chapter 02 of 5
The Lines That Lied
How a room full of wrong answers changes what people say they see.
- The Researcher
Solomon Asch
In the early 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch studied whether people would contradict their own eyes to fit in with a group.
- The Task
Match the line
Participants looked at one line, then said which of three other lines matched its length. The answer was obvious.
- Alone
Almost no mistakes
When people did the task alone, they almost never got it wrong.
17 more cards in this chapter
Could you answer this?
In Asch's experiments, what most reduced people going along with the wrong answer?
🧪 Experiments That Shocked Psychology
- 01Just Following OrdersMilgram's obedience experiments — and what they really showed.
- 02The Lines That LiedHow a room full of wrong answers changes what people say they see.
- 03The Prison in the BasementThe Stanford Prison Experiment — and why its famous lesson is now doubted.
- 04The Marshmallow TestA famous test of willpower — and what bigger studies found.
- 05The Replication CrisisWhen famous findings didn't hold up — and how science fixed itself.