In reality, all but one of the participants were actors, and the true focus of the study was about how the remaining participant would react to the actors' behavior. Groups of eight male college students participated in a simple "perceptual" task. The card on the left has the reference line and the one on the right shows the three comparison lines. One of the pairs of cards used in the experiment.
The experiment was published on two occasions. In 1951, Asch conducted his first conformity laboratory experiments at Swarthmore College, laying the foundation for his remaining conformity studies. Solomon Asch's experiments on group conformity mark a departure from these earlier studies by removing investigator influence from experimental conditions. Still the question remained as to whether subject opinions were actually able to be changed, or if such experiments were simply documenting a Hawthorne effect in which participants simply gave researchers the answers they wanted to hear. Thorndyke were able to shift the preferences of adult subjects towards majority or expert opinion. Many early studies in social psychology were adaptations of earlier work on "suggestibility" whereby researchers such as Edward L.
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