The Pull of the Crowd

Conformity is not a weakness — it is an evolutionary feature. In ancestral environments, breaking from the group could mean death.

What makes this strange is how little it takes. In Asch's setup, the others were strangers the subject would never meet again, there was no prize for agreeing, and no penalty for speaking up. The pull was purely social — proof of how deeply the urge to match the group runs, even when nothing real is on the line.