Contrived dissent is better than nothing, especially if the contrivance itself is taken seriously. But the most valuable form ...

In a February article in the online magazine Slate, Columbia University Professor Duncan Watts exhumed the work of the late Princeton social psychologist Solomon Asch to explain what Watts called the ...

Solomon Asch was one of the greatest psychologists of the past century. In his autobiography, he recalls from his childhood an event on the evening of his first Passover. He saw his grandmother ...

Exactly what is the effect of the opinions of others on our own? In other words, how strong is the urge toward social conformity? The question is approached by means of some unusual experiments ...

You’re in a room, participating in what you were told is a visual perception experiment, and everyone around you insists that two unequal lines are the same length. You feel confused, sick, and ...