Some personality correlates of independence of judgment.

This research report deals with some of the personality correlates of independence of judgment in an experimental social situation. The experiment itself was planned and carried out by Solomon AscIi, who has described it in detail in an earlier paper. He designed a group-interaction procedure in which individual subjects were put under considerable implicit pressure from their peers to agree with an erroneous group opinion. AscIi studied several hundred subjects with this technique or experimental variations of it, and he has drawn a number of general conclusions concerning basic processes in the interaction between individuals and groups. It should be noted at this point that the questionnaire is almost exclusively contented towards the virtues of Independents, or at least towards the qualities which Independents would consider virtues. The virtues of Yielders are not to be found here, nor are the more unpleasant characteristics of Independents. Indeed, it is evident from the design of the experiment itself that the kind of social cone enormity known as Yielding is achieved at the cost of abandoning the evidence of one's own senses, which would seem to be carrying a good thing rather too far. It is dearly better to be independent; and good or bad behavior is what the experiment seems designed to elicit.