Most social acts have to be understood in their setting, and lose meaning if isolated. No error in thinking about social facts is more serious than the failure to see their place and function.
Psychologists
Solomon Asch
Polish-American Gestalt social psychologist (1907-1996). His 1951 conformity studies showed that over a third of subjects went along with a wrong majority. His 1946 paper named warm/cold as central traits in impression.
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Solomon Asch's Other Quotes
To know a person is to have a grasp of a particular structure.
Independence and conformity were the two main attitudes toward the majority pressure, and most subjects exhibited some of each.
The presence of a supporting partner depleted the majority of much of its power. Its pressure on the individual was reduced to one fourth.
The tendency to conformity in our society is so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black. This is a matter of concern.
Related Quotes
The true is the whole.
-- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
We choose freedom.
-- Konrad Adenauer
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
-- Harry S. Truman
To know a person is to have a grasp of a particular structure.
-- Solomon Asch
The whole is something else than the sum of its parts.
-- Wolfgang Köhler
The available data fail to support the hypothesis that psychotherapy facilitates recovery from neurotic disorder.
-- Hans Eysenck