因为内容抽象、词汇专业，雅思阅读中的心理学文章可以说是洪水猛兽一样的存在，越是这样越应该多接触此类文章，增加积累。今天我们一起来学习一个在雅思考场上出现的一个关于从众心理的心理学实验——The Asch Paradigm

心理现象：

从众心理（conformity），指个人受到外界人群行为的影响，而在自己的知觉、判断、认识上表现出符合于公众舆论或多数人的行为方式，而实验表明只有很少的人保持了独立性，没有被从众，所以从众心理是部分个体普遍所有的心理现象，比如消费从众和学习从众。社会心理学家对于这一现象也曾经进行反复研究，其中比较著名的有所罗门.阿施的实验，在雅思2018年12月的阅读Passage3中就考过这个实验。

背景介绍：

Social psychologist Solomon Asch challenged our idea of ourselves as autonomous beings when he devised an experiment to demonstrate our urge to conform. His famous experiment showed that when people are confronted with a majority opinion, the tendency to conform may be stronger than their commitment to what they perceive to be true. He detailed his findings in his 1955 paper Opinions and Social Pressure, which also discusses the social influences that shape a person's beliefs, judgments, and practices. Asch wanted to investigate the effects of group pressure on individual decision-making, and how and to what extent people's attitudes were influenced by social forces around them.

社会心理学家所罗门·阿施(Solomon Asch)在设计一项实验来证明我们有从众的冲动时，挑战了我们认为自己是独立自主的生物的观点。他的著名实验表明，当人们面对大多数人的意见时，随大流的倾向可能比他们对坚守自己认为正确的事的信念更强烈。在他1955年的论文《观点和社会压力》中，他详细描述了自己的发现，也讨论了社会对一个人的信仰、判断、和行为处事的塑造产生的影响。Asch想调查团体压力对个人决策的影响，以及人们的态度在如何以及多大程度上受到社会力量的影响。

Turkish psychologist Muzafer Sherif set out to answer similar questions in 1935, using a visual illusion called the autokinetic effect, whereby a stationary spot of light seen in a dark room appears to move. He told the subjects of his study that he was going to move the light and asked them how far they thought it had shifted. Tested in groups, the participants' estimates converged into a group norm, revealing that they used others estimates as a frame of reference in an ambiguous situation. Although Sherif believed that he had demonstrated the principles of conformity, Asch contended that-because there was no right or wrong answer to the task-no definitive conclusions could be drawn. Conformity, he believed, could only be measured in terms of an individual’s tendency to agree with group members who unanimously give the wrong answer on a task that has an unambiguous solution. The simple perceptual task that became known as the Asch Paradigm was designed to offer this.

土耳其心理学家Muzafer Sherif在1935年开始解答类似的问题，他使用了一种被称为“自动运动效应”的视觉错觉：在黑暗的房间里，一个静止的光点似乎在移动。他告诉他的研究对象：他要移动这个光点，并问他们认为这个光点移动了有多远。在小组中测试后，参与者的估计最终形成一个小组的统一估计中，表明他们在一个模糊的情况下使用其他人的估计作为参考框架。尽管Sherif相信他已经展示了一致性的原则，Asch认为——因为这个任务没有正确或错误的答案——没有明确的结论可以得出。他认为，一致性只能用个人倾向来衡量，即在一项有明确解决方案的任务中，集体成员一致给出错误答案的倾向。后来被称为Asch范式的简单感知任务就是为了提供这一点而设计的。

The Asch Paradigm (Description of the experiment)

The experiment was conducted with 123 male subjects, each of whom was put individually into a group of five to seven “confederates” (people who were aware of the real aims of the experiment but were introduced as fellow participants). The group was shown one card with a line on it, followed by another card with three lines labelled A, B, and C, and asked which one of those three lines was the same length as the line on the first card.

Asch范式（实验描述）

该实验以123名男性受试者为研究对象，每名受试者被单独分为5至7名“同谋者”(这些人知道实验的真正目的，但被介绍为其他参与者)。给一组人看一张卡片，卡片上有一条线，接着是另一张卡片，卡片上有三条线，分别是A、B、C，然后问他们哪一条线的长度与第一张卡片上的线相同。

The room was always organized so that the subject would give either the last or the penultimate answer. Over the course of 18 trials, confederates were instructed to provide the correct answers for the first six, but then to give identical but incorrect answers for another 12. This was to test whether or not the subject would answer correctly or whether he would match his response to that of the confederates when all gave the same-incorrect-answer.

房间总是安排得井井有条，以便让被试者给出最后一个或倒数第二个答案。在18次试验中，“同谋者”被要求在前6次中给出正确答案，然后在另外12次中给出相同但不正确的答案。这是为了测试被试者是否能正确回答问题，或者当所有被试者都给出同样错误的答案时，被试者是否能与被试者的回答相匹配。

Initially, Asch thought that only few of the subjects would comply with the confederates' answers. After all, the task was simple and the answers obvious; during the pilot study in which there was no pressure to yield to an erroneous group, only three errors were made out of 720 total trials. The results of the actual study were surprising. When surrounded by a group of people all giving the same incorrect answer, subjects gave incorrect answers on almost a third (32 percent) of the questions; 75 percent of them provided an incorrect response for at least one question. One person complied with the group giving a wrong answer on 11 out of 12 trials. Because the task was both simple and unambiguous, these figures indicate a high degree of conformity by the subjects. However, not a single participant conformed on all critical trials, and 13 of the 50 participants (26 percent) never conformed.The results proved that the subjects themselves were highly consistent. Those who broke away from the group opinion and provided an independent answer did not succumb to the majority even over many trials, while those who chose to comply with the majority seemed unable to break this pattern.

最初，Asch认为只有少数受试者会同意“同谋者”的回答。毕竟，任务很简单，答案也很明显；在试验性研究中，没有向错误组屈服的压力，720次试验中只有3次出错。实际研究的结果却令人惊讶：当一群人都给出了同样的错误答案时，受试者几乎有三分之一(32%)的问题给出了错误的答案；75%的人至少对一个问题给出了错误的答案。在12次试验中，有11次出现了错误的答案。由于任务既简单又明确，这些数字表明受试者高度一致。然而，没有一个参与者在所有关键试验中都跟随大多数人，50名参与者中有13人(26%)从未跟风。结果证明，受试者本身是高度一致的。那些脱离群体意见并提供独立答案的人，即使在多次试验中也没有屈服于多数人，而那些选择服从多数人的人似乎无法打破这种模式。

Explanations

To get a deeper understanding of his results, Asch interviewed his subjects to find out why they offered incorrect answers. Some said they wanted to go along with what they believed to be the experimenter’s wishes and avoid upsetting the overall experiment. A few actually wondered if they were perhaps suffering from eye strain or were seated at a misleading angle. Some denied that they were aware of having given incorrect answers. Eventually, some admitted to knowing their answers were incorrect, adding that they did not want to stand out or appear different and foolish: they wanted to fit in. Asch also spoke to the subjects who had maintained correct and independent responses, and found that they had not been unresponsive to the majority, but had been able to recover from the doubt that they felt in order to give an honest account of what they saw.

解释

为了更深入地了解他的研究结果，Asch采访了他的研究对象，找出他们给出错误答案的原因。一些人说，他们希望按照他们认为是实验者的意愿行事，避免扰乱整个实验。有几个人甚至怀疑自己可能是眼睛疲劳了，或是坐得角度有问题。一些人否认他们知道自己给出了错误的答案。最终，一些人承认他们知道自己的答案是错误的，并补充说，他们不想脱颖而出或显得与众不同和愚蠢：他们想要融入。Asch还与那些保持正确和独立的受试者进行了交谈，发现他们并不是对大多数人没有反应，而是能够从他们所感到的怀疑中恢复过来，以便诚实地描述他们所看到的事情。

Asch performed variations on the experiment to test what difference the size of the majority group made to levels of conformity. He found that just one confederate had virtually no influence on the subject's conformity, two had only a small influence, but three or more encouraged a relatively stable tendency to conform. Unanimity in the confederates' responses was a more powerful factor, but even if only one confederate offered an alternative answer, the subjects were much more likely to provide an independent (and correct) response. This finding highlights the power of even a very small dissenting minority. Furthermore, Asch discovered that if he allowed the participants to give their answers privately, by writing them down on a piece of paper, conformity noticeably decreased and this held true even if the confederates were still giving their answers aloud.

Aschdui对实验进行了多种改变，以测试多数群体的规模对从众程度的影响。他发现，只有一个“同谋者”对实验对象的从众心理几乎没有任何影响，只有两个“同谋者”对从众心理有很小的影响，但有三个或更多的实验对象的从众心理相对稳定。在“同谋者”的回答中的一致性是一个更有力的因素，但即使只有一个“同谋者”提供了另一个答案，实验对象也更有可能提供一个独立的(且正确的)回答。这一发现突显了即使是非常小的持不同意见的少数派的力量。此外，Asch发现，如果他允许参与者私下给出答案，把他们的答案写在一张纸上，一致性就会明显下降。即使“同谋者”仍然在大声给出答案的情况下，结果也是如此

Cultural norms

Some psychologists hypothesized that Asch's findings reflected the cultural climate of 1950s America during McCarthyism, when dissent was seen as anti-American and people were imprisoned for their opinions. Later studies found variations in levels of conformity. For instance, a study conducted in the early 1970s (a time of liberal, progressive thinking in the US) found far lower rates of conformity. However, a study in the late 1970s showed a return to higher rates.

文化规范

一些心理学家猜测，Asch的发现反映了20世纪50年代美国麦卡锡主义时期的文化氛围，当时持不同意见被视为反美，人们因为自己的观点而被监禁。后来的研究发现，从众程度存在差异。例如，20世纪70年代初(美国自由进步思想的时代)进行的一项研究发现，从众率要低得多。然而，上世纪70年代末的一项研究显示，从众率又开始回升。

Conformity rates for cultures worldwide also differ. Researchers found that individualist cultures such as the US, the UK, and other Western European countries, where personal choice and individual achievements are valued highly, show lower levels of conformity than collectivist cultures such as Japan, Fiji, and African countries, where group belonging is valued highly.

世界各地文化的从众率也各不相同。研究人员发现，美国、英国和其他西欧国家等个人选择和个人成就受到高度重视的个人主义文化，与日本、斐济和非洲国家等高度重视群体归属感的集体主义文化相比，一致性水平较低。

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