the asch conformity experiments (1951) involved a series of studies directed by american psychologist solomon asch that measured the effects of majority group belief and opinion on individuals. 50 male students from swarthmore college participated in a vision test with a line judgement task. a naive participant was put in a room with seven confederates (i.e. actors) who had agreed in advance to match their responses. the participant was not aware of this and was told that the actors were also naive participants. there was one control condition with no confederates. confederates purposefully gave the wrong answer on 12 trials. through 18 trials total, asch (1951) found that one third (33%) of naive participants conformed with the clearly incorrect majority, with 75% of participants over the 12 trials. less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer when there were no confederates.