Michael: You may be interested to know that Solomon Asch said that one event
that influenced his conformity research was a childhood memory of the
Passover Seder, where his family left a glass of wine for Elijah (I think-
someone please correct me if I am wrong), and everyone (including him) saw
the level in the glass go down. The story is in Aron & Aron's _The Heart of
Social Psychology_. Regarding levitation: Abbie Hoffman tells a great story
about the levitation of the Pentagon (and how the group that was present
perceived it)in his autobiography _Soon to be a Major Motion Picture_.

Subsequent research has extended Asch's original paradigm to just about
every perceptual/judgmental/attitudinal/belief task you could think up.


Marty Bourgeois
University of Wyoming


-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Sylvester [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, October 02, 2000 9:17 AM
To: TIPS
Subject: Solomon Asch



In the conformity as agreement paradigm,Solomon Asch demonstrated that a
subject can be influenced to alter his opinion about the equivalence
of lines if pressured by the conspiracy of other participants.
Have there been other similar types of experiments involving other
variables besides comparing three lines to a standard line?.

Btw,I have been toying with the idea with a levitation paradigm:
If confederate subjects convince a naive subject that a certain
individual levitates,will this subject go against his perceptual
acuity and admit to the perceptual deviance of levitation?

Michael Sylvester,Ph.D
Daytona Beach,Florida
                          "Can you see,what I see?"






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