IN 1951 at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, social psychologist Solomon Asch staged a telling experiment on groups of eight students. He showed them three lines of different lengths and asked them which one matched a fourth line. The answer was obvious. But seven of the students were in fact actors. When they went first and gave the wrong answer, the eighth participant - the real one -was much more likely to do the same. This became known as the "conformity experiment" - proof of the human tendency to be gullible.
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