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In the early 1950s, following the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany in the previous decade, Soloman Asch studied the power of individual integrity to determine whether most people could withstand group pressure to conform. Asch invited groups of eight subjects, all university students, to compare the lengths of black lines drawn on cards. In reality only one of the subjects was a ‘bona fide’ volunteer. The others were stooges and had been instructed to say that lines of obviously different lengths were the same length. Most subjects initially resisted the peer pressure to conform, but contrary to Asch’s expectation, one-third eventually ignored the evidence of their own eyes and agreed with the rest of the group, claiming the lines were of the same length when they obviously were not, demonstrating the power of group conformity. Although you may think Asch’s experiment as not being of a serious breach of ethical propriety, his participants were deceived about the true nature of the experiment. Each subject thought they were one of eight subjects involved in a simple cognitive experiment, yet had they known the true nature of the study, what would Asch’s results have been? The ethical dilemma is that while deception should not be practised, in some experiments like Asch’s there is no option, and we would know far less about group pressure to conform that translates into employee work groups, union meetings, and directors’ meetings. However, the long-term effects of being deceived can include a growing mistrust of researchers and the research they are doing. Participants may be less likely to participate again if they had felt embarrassed and ridiculed by previous involvement.