220 HODGES.MEAGHER.NORTON.MCBAIN.AND SROUBEK studies are famous for the ants agreec ay be the u bigg n.To majority about wo thirds of the time (e.g.. epeat th others is to ackn wledee tha to dise casionall plain.Partic This hasi und ental problems for the rative intentions n the (Hodges Geyer.200 eing som with i 70% )and one's open to hat the can plau sibly acc es but suffe ant or It is because of the he n the say in an awk ho do not care what others think or if the people who of ght h to whor s add truthfully) subm ting to that mmon eround for commu ted C9. ied Asch's dile the gh to c ist that th ad values must he realized tha ing even i ing pra ing an m)seems to do oned the co xP sey.200 1000 that Aschng negat it is actually cial dile wrong but be The Dilemma of Speaking From Ignorance stake in the Asch ticipants do not have ton ava h views of self and others without deprecating eithe To sce more clearly hov ources.which w for of the vsiuatedurc re 12 critical trials which allow inants to yary their behavion mple Grice's (1975)well-knowr han being trapped by an alor-none dile ales).such as honesty and at stake in the Asch situatio in The pragmat nter,on own p hich a that for which you (Grice.1975).A em ns in the of tr can be captured by mere accuracy.Thus.the situation calls for sider the answers of others to be adequate evidence:the othestudies are famous for the number of times participants agreed with wrong answers (e.g., Moscovici, 1985), the bigger surprise may be the much larger number of times they dissented from the unanimous majority, about two thirds of the time (e.g., Friend, Rafferty, & Bramel, 1990; Harris, 1985). The most common behavior was to dissent most of the time but to agree occasionally, captured in the median response of nine dissenting answers and three incorrect answers on critical trials. This basic result presents fundamental problems for the usual accounts offered to explain the results (Hodges & Geyer, 2006). Normative accounts simply do not address the massive amount of truth-telling dissent observed in Asch situations (over 70% of participants always or mostly dissent). Information-based ac￾counts, which assume that the dilemma is about epistemological uncertainty, can plausibly account for diverse responses but suffer from findings that there is a sharp reduction in agreeing answers when answers are not publicly shared with one’s peers (Asch, 1955, 1956). Results of this sort suggest that the dilemma is less a matter of epistemic confusion than it is a struggle to know what is appropriate to say in an awkward, tense situation. Asch (1955, 1956) thought he had designed a moral dilemma, an all-or-nothing choice between right (i.e., answering the experi￾menter’s question truthfully) and wrong (i.e., submitting to con￾sensus rather than maintaining one’s independence). Many psy￾chologists since Asch seem to have adopted a zero-tolerance standard (Friend et al., 1990; Krueger & Funder, 2004) regarding agreement with wrong answers: A single agreement with a wrong answer is enough to count one as a conformist, implying that the person is not dissenting even if he or she disagrees 11 times out of 12. Effectively, this all-or-nothing approach renders dissent as uninteresting and uninformative. Numerous researchers have questioned the conformity account of Asch’s (1956) results (e.g., Friend et al., 1990; Harris, 1985; Hodges & Geyer, 2006; Krueger & Massey, 2009; McCauley & Rozin, 2003). One of the most interesting of these is D. T. Campbell (1990), who argued that Asch was wrong to view consensus in such a negative way; it is actually a necessary good, especially when viewed from an evolutionary standpoint. Thus, Asch’s dilemma might better be regarded as a choice not between right and wrong but between multiple goods in tension. Following Campbell, Hodges and Geyer (2006) claimed that there are at least three salient values at stake in the Asch situation: truth (i.e., honestly expressing one’s own view), trust (i.e., acknowledging the value of others’ views), and social solidarity (i.e., integrating the views of self and others without deprecating either). Seeing the dilemma as a tension among values might naturally lead one to think of the situation in terms of tragic tradeoffs, but Hodges and Geyer proposed that there are pragmatic resources, which allow for a more creative, balanced response. One such resource is that there are 12 critical trials, which allow participants to vary their behavior rather than being trapped by an all-or-none dilemma. A values-pragmatic analysis suggests a complex array of rela￾tionships and obligations are at stake in the Asch situation: “How does one speak the truth in a complex, tense, and frustrating situation . . . in a way that simultaneously honors one’s peers, the experimenter, one’s own perception, and the situation in which all are embedded?” (Hodges, 2004, p. 344). The nature of truth, as it functions in the Asch situation, is larger and more complex than can be captured by mere accuracy. Thus, the situation calls for people to speak truthfully but in a way that reveals something of the awkwardness and tension of the situation and that is respectful of others’ views, even if one disagrees sharply with them. To repeat the wrong answers of others is to acknowledge that one hears and understands their point of view, even if one has other￾wise made one’s disagreement plain. Participants can realize mul￾tiple values in an inherently frustrating situation by varying pat￾terns of dissent and agreement to communicate larger scale truths and cooperative intentions. Agreeing some of the time with incorrect answers can function as a pragmatic signal of one’s commitment to taking others’ views seriously (i.e., social solidarity) and one’s openness to further conversation about the situation. If a person always dissented from a group’s expressed views, it would be easy for that person to be seen as arrogant or dismissive. It is because of the heterarchical relations among values that those participants who offer truthful dissent will increasingly be constrained to offer a sign of their trust and social solidarity with those from whom they are dissenting. Dissent, after all, cannot function if it is directed toward people who do not care what others think or if the people who offer it have no concern for those to whom the dissent is addressed. Dissent implicitly appeals to some sense of shared concern for truth and other goods that provide a common ground for communicative discourse and social interaction. The complexity of the physical, social, and moral dynamics embodied in Asch’s dilemma is not unlike the complexity that drivers face in negotiating the physical, social, and moral hazards of the road. Values must be realized continuously, in ways that require ongoing pragmatic judgments and adjustments. The dom￾inant pattern observed, mostly disagreeing but sometimes agreeing (e.g., the 9/3 pattern), seems to do just this, as does the diversity of responses in the experiment as a whole (Asch, 1956; Hodges & Geyer, 2006). From this perspective, it was wrong for Asch to assume that an individual speaking to others with whom he or she has a sharp disagreement should say exactly the same thing he or she would have said when alone with the experimenter. Acting in a social dilemma requires sensitivity and finesse, not simply inde￾pendence and honesty. The Dilemma of Speaking From Ignorance At first glance, the SFI situation seems quite unlike the Asch situation: Participants do not have visual information available that contradicts information provided by other witnesses. From this perspective, there should be no dilemma. To see more clearly how the SFI task could pose a dilemma for participants, however, consider the pragmatics of the situation. Pragmatics, which is the study of the contextual appropriateness of situated utterances, can itself be understood as grounded in values (Grice, 1991). For example, Grice’s (1975) well-known cooperativeness principle is an attempt to delineate key demands (i.e., values), such as honesty, economy, and coherence, that speakers and listeners must realize if they are to function effectively in conversations. The pragmatic cooperativeness that is entailed in ordinary conversations usually involves the following: saying neither what you believe to be false nor that for which you lack adequate evidence (Grice, 1975). An SFI situation pulls and twists these two aspects of cooperation inside out, creating a frustrating tension. One solution is to con￾sider the answers of others to be adequate evidence; the other This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 220 HODGES, MEAGHER, NORTON, MCBAIN, AND SROUBEK