IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0294325.html

The power of social influence: A replication and extension of the Asch experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Axel Franzen
  • Sebastian Mader

Abstract

In this paper, we pursue four goals: First, we replicate the original Asch experiment with five confederates and one naïve subject in each group (N = 210). Second, in a randomized trial we incentivize the decisions in the line experiment and demonstrate that monetary incentives lower the error rate, but that social influence is still at work. Third, we confront subjects with different political statements and show that the power of social influence can be generalized to matters of political opinion. Finally, we investigate whether intelligence, self-esteem, the need for social approval, and the Big Five are related to the susceptibility to provide conforming answers. We find an error rate of 33% for the standard length-of-line experiment which replicates the original findings by Asch (1951, 1955, 1956). Furthermore, in the incentivized condition the error rate decreases to 25%. For political opinions we find a conformity rate of 38%. However, besides openness, none of the investigated personality traits are convincingly related to the susceptibility of group pressure.

Suggested Citation

  • Axel Franzen & Sebastian Mader, 2023. "The power of social influence: A replication and extension of the Asch experiment," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(11), pages 1-14, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0294325
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0294325
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0294325
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0294325&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0294325?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Camerer, Colin F & Hogarth, Robin M, 1999. "The Effects of Financial Incentives in Experiments: A Review and Capital-Labor-Production Framework," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 19(1-3), pages 7-42, December.
    2. Maria Andersson & Martin Hedesström & Tommy Gärling, 2014. "A Social-Psychological Perspective on Herding in Stock Markets," Journal of Behavioral Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(3), pages 226-234, July.
    3. repec:plo:pone00:0196600 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Syon P. Bhanot & Charles Williamson, 2020. "Financial Incentives and Herding: Evidence from Two Online Experiments," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(4), pages 1559-1575, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alger, Ingela & Gavrilets, Sergey & Durkee, Patrick, 2024. "Proximate and ultimate drivers of norms and norm change," IAST Working Papers 24-163, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Howard Kunreuther & Erwann Michel-Kerjan, 2015. "Demand for fixed-price multi-year contracts: Experimental evidence from insurance decisions," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 171-194, October.
    2. Ranganathan, Kavitha & Lejarraga, Tomás, 2021. "Elicitation of risk preferences through satisficing," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C).
    3. Simon Gächter & Lingbo Huang & Martin Sefton, 2016. "Combining “real effort” with induced effort costs: the ball-catching task," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(4), pages 687-712, December.
    4. Aksoy, Cevat Giray & Cabrales, Antonio & Dolls, Mathias & Durante, Ruben & Windsteiger, Lisa, 2025. "Calamities, common interests, shared identity: What shapes social cohesion in Europe?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 1049-1068.
    5. James C. Cox & Vjollca Sadiraj, 2018. "Incentives," Experimental Economics Center Working Paper Series 2018-01, Experimental Economics Center, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    6. Chetan Dave & Catherine Eckel & Cathleen Johnson & Christian Rojas, 2010. "Eliciting risk preferences: When is simple better?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 219-243, December.
    7. Helena Szrek & Li-Wei Chao & Shandir Ramlagan & Karl Peltzer, 2012. "Predicting (un)healthy behavior: A comparison of risk-taking propensity measures," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 7(6), pages 716-727, November.
    8. Klein Teeselink, Bouke & Potter van Loon, Rogier J.D. & van den Assem, Martijn J. & van Dolder, Dennie, 2020. "Incentives, performance and choking in darts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 38-52.
    9. Steven Kachelmeier & Kristy Towry, 2005. "The Limitations of Experimental Design: A Case Study Involving Monetary Incentive Effects in Laboratory Markets," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 8(1), pages 21-33, April.
    10. Idris Idris & Saefudin Zuhri & Mohammad Efendi, 2018. "Determinants of Employee Work Satisfaction," International Review of Management and Marketing, Econjournals, vol. 8(6), pages 47-52.
    11. Max Deter, 2020. "Prosociality and Risk Preferences in the Financial Sector," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1075, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    12. Maite D. Laméris & Richard Jong-A-Pin & Rasmus Wiese, 2018. "An Experimental Test of the Validity of Survey-Measured Political Ideology," CESifo Working Paper Series 7139, CESifo.
    13. Patt, Anthony G. & Bowles, Hannah Riley & Cash, David W., 2006. "Mechanisms for Enhancing the Credibility of an Adviser: Prepayment and Aligned Incentives," Working Paper Series rwp06-010, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    14. Ben-Ner, Avner & Putterman, Louis & Kong, Fanmin & Magan, Dan, 2004. "Reciprocity in a two-part dictator game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 333-352, March.
    15. Nicolas Jacquemet & Stéphane Luchini & Jason F. Shogren & Verity Watson, 2019. "Discrete Choice under Oaths," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 19007, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    16. Fan Liu, 2018. "Why Buy Accident Forgiveness Policies? An Experiment," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 10(8), pages 1-1, August.
    17. Claudia Keser & Jean-Louis Rullière & Marie Claire Villeval, 2004. "Le paradoxe de l'adhésion syndicale : une approche expérimentale en termes de jeu de bien public," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(3), pages 81-92.
    18. Nikil Mukerji & Adriano Mannino, 2023. "Nudge Me If You Can! Why Order Ethicists Should Embrace the Nudge Approach," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 186(2), pages 309-324, August.
    19. Caliendo, Marco & Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Obst, Cosima & Uhlendorff, Arne, 2023. "Risk preferences and training investments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 668-686.
    20. Daley, Brendan & Sadowski, Philipp, 2017. "Magical thinking: A representation result," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(2), May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0294325. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.