Much research has been done in the past century on conformity to a majority. This is when there is a change in behaviour when in the minority of an issue and resultantly agreeing with the majority on the issue. Social Psychologist Solomon Asch investigated this social influence in a series of classic studies (1951, 1952, 1956, as cited in Atkinson, Atkinson, Smith, Bem, Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000). His experiment involved a participant being seated with seven to nine confederates. They were all presented with a standard line and three comparison lines. The group was then asked to judge which line was the same length as the standard line. They had to go round the group and say their answer. The subject was sitting in the next-to-last seat. The confederates had been told to give the wrong answer in twelve predetermined trials of the eighteen. When not subjected to any group pressure 95% of subjects got the answer correct. However when in this group situation about 75% of the subjects conformed at least once with the incorrect majority. .
Many replications of this experiment have been carried out. But in the majority of cases there has been little conformity of the subjects. This led Perrin and Spencer (1981) to say that Asch's findings were "a child of it's time"; a reflection of the cultural and situational factors of the time when the 1950's student subjects were unobtrusive members of society. In their replication experiment only one out of 396 trials did a subject conform. This has been the case with many other replication experiments. Nicholson, Cole and Rocklin (1985) repeated the experiment and looked at the difference between UK and USA. He found there was no significant difference between the two countries and found there to be generally lower conformity rates to Asch's experiments; 20 - 25% rate of conformity. This suggests that society has changed since the 1950s when Asch carried out his research.
