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The Asch conformity experiments, published in 1951, were a series of studies that starkly demonstrated the power of conformity in groups.

Experiments led by Solomon Asch asked students to participate in a "vision test." In reality, all but one of the participants were confederates of the experimenter, and the study was really about how the remaining student would react to the confederates' behavior.

The participants — the real subject and the confederates — were all seated in a classroom where they were told to announce their judgment of the length of several lines drawn on a series of displays. They were asked which line was longer than the other, which were the same length, etc. The confederates had been prearranged to all give an incorrect answer to the tests.

While most subjects answered correctly, many showed extreme discomfort, and a high proportion (33%) conformed to the erroneous majority view of the others in the room when there were at least three confederates present, even when the majority said that two lines different in length by several inches were the same length. When the confederates were not unanimous in their judgment, subjects were much more likely to defect than when the confederates all agreed. Control subjects with no exposure to a majority view had no trouble giving the correct answer.

One difference between the Asch conformity experiments and the Milgram experiment as carried out by Stanley Milgram (also famous in social psychology) is that the subjects of these studies attributed their performance to their own misjudgment and "poor eyesight", while those in the Milgram experiment blamed the experimenter in explaining their behavior. Conformity may be much less salient than authority pressure.

The Asch experiments may provide some vivid empirical evidence relevant to some of the ideas raised in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (see two plus two make five). This also helps illustrate the concept of "point at a deer and call it a horse" (指鹿為馬/指鹿为马) that was made infamous by Zhao Gao.

A number of critiques have been lobbed against Asch's experiment including a question of the motivation of students to be accurate. Rather than testing conformity, Asch's study may have simply measured a disinterested student's reluctance to engage in conflict to get the answer right. Moreover, in Asch's experiments the subjects were not allowed to interact with confederates. When the experiment was conducted in which even one confederate was allowed to give the correct answer, confirming responses dropped significantly. This is consistent with Milgram's later findings of the effect of "role models for defiance" in his classic Obedience Experiment.

• Group processes
• Social psychology
• Psychology experiments