Solomon Asch (1907-1996)

Early Life

Solomon E. Asch was born in 1907 in Warsaw, Poland. When he was thirteen years old, his family immigrated to the United States. Asch studied at the college of the City of New York and earned his bachelor’s degree in 1928. He continued his studies at Columbia University, where he earned both his master’s and his Ph.D. While there, Asch was mentored by Max Wertheimer. This influence significantly impacted Asch’s views on Gestalt, thinking, association, and perception.    

Professional Life

Asch began his professional career at Swarthmore College, where he was a professor of psychology for nineteen years. While there, he worked with several colleagues to further explore the theories that perplexed him. One of his colleagues at the time was Wolfgang Kohler. He later received the distinguished title of Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Asch became widely recognized for his theories on social psychology and impression during the 1950s. Of his groundbreaking and often controversial ideas, several impacted psychology permanently. His theory on prestige suggestion stated that a person’s behavior is not in direct response to their environment or experience; rather it is a response to their perception of their environment or experience. He experimented on the formation of impressions and believed that people have personality traits that are based on other traits that they possess. This caused him to be discounted and his experiments to be unqualified by experts and proponents of elementist models. This subject remains controversial today, however Asch’s methods for impression comparison are still widely used.  

Contribution to Psychology

His studies on conformity are his most validated and recognized achievements. These studies were known as the Asch Paradigms. By offering his test subjects other people’s opinions on concrete stimuli, varying line lengths, the subjects were then asked to form their own opinions. However, during these experiments, most of the test subjects were unable to refrain from conforming to the opinions of others, even though the answer was blatantly incorrect. These experiments emphasized the significance of conformity in social settings, and provided a springboard for years of similar research. Asch’s research directly influenced many experts in the field, including Stanly Milgram and his study of obedience with relation to authority.  

Asch’s embodiment of his theories, in his textbook Social Psychology (1952), is among his greatest achievements. In it, his chief experiments are outlined, and his views on the integration of social and natural sciences are detailed. Asch steers clear of embracing any one particular form of psychology, and instead chooses to view the human being as intricately complicated and comprehensible at the same time. This hallmark of his success has been an influence on social psychology since its publication and continues to generate discussion and research on the subject of conformity.