Solomon Asch

Solomon Eliot Asch (September 14, 1907 – February 20, 1996) was a Polish-American Gestalt psychologist and pioneer in social psychology. He conducted seminal research on impression formation, prestige suggestion, conformity, and many other topics. His work reflects a common theme of Gestalt psychology that the whole is not only different from the sum of its parts, but the nature of the whole fundamentally alters the understanding of the parts. Asch stated: "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". Asch is most well known for his conformity experiments, in which he demonstrated the influence of group pressure on opinions. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Asch as the 41st most cited psychologist of the 20th century.