Beautiful Souls: The Courage and Conscience of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times Highlight

When Asch collated the results, he found that only one-fourth of the participants were able to get through the eighteen-comparison exercise without yielding to the group at least once. In interviews afterward, subjects gave reasons for capitulating—the fear of being seen as “black sheep,” “weak-headed,” “queer”—that illustrated the power of what Asch termed “the majority effect.” Breaking down the results by educational background, Asch found that a person’s level of schooling made little difference in his or her ability to resist this effect. What mattered instead was a willingness to tolerate a certain kind of social discomfort, “the painfulness of standing alone,” which was by far the most common reason individuals gave for submitting to the group.