At the bottom of all human activities are “values,” the conviction that some things “ought to be” and others not. Science, however, with its immense interest in mere facts seems to lack all understanding of such‘requiredness.’… A science … which would seriously admit nothing but indifferent facts … could not fail to destroy itself. (Kohler, 1938/1966, p. 38‐39)

This article offers a new approach to Asch's (1956) influential studies relating physical and social perception. Drawing on research on values, conversational pragmatics, cross-cultural comparisons, and negotiation, the authors challenge the normative assumptions that have led psychologists to interpret the studies in terms of conformity. A values-pragmatics account is offered that suggests that participants attempt to realize multiple values (e.g., truth, social solidarity) in an inherently frustrating situation by tacitly varying patterns of dissent and agreement to communicate larger scale truths and cooperative intentions. Alternative theories (e.g., embarrassment, attribution) are compared and empirical implications of the values-pragmatics account are evaluated. The possibility of multiple strategies promoting group survival and the proper role of moral evaluation in social psychological research are considered.

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This experiment assessed relative weighting of traits in three types of personality descriptions; those with only favorable traits (PP), with favorable and unfavorable traits (PN), and with only unfavorable traits (NN), Predictions that traits in PP descriptions would be weighted equally and that the more negative trait in PN and NN descriptions would receive greater weight were supported by the results. The results were generally consistent with the initial impression averaging model, although a possible difficulty with respect to the relative size of set-size effects for PP and NN descriptions was noted.