Solomon Asch - Education

Education

Asch was shy when he moved to the United States and did not speak English fluently. He went to the neighborhood public school, P.S. 147, to attend 6th grade. As a result of the language barrier, Asch had a very difficult time understanding in class. He learned English by reading Charles Dickens. Asch later attended Townsend Harris High School, a very selective high school attached to the City College of New York. After high school, he attended the City College of New York, majoring in both literature and science. He became interested in psychology towards the end of his undergraduate career after reading the work of William James and a few philosophers. In 1928, when he was 21 years old, he received his Bachelor of Science.

Asch went on to pursue his graduate degree at Columbia University. He initially was not very interested in social psychology, but he was interested in anthropology. With the help of Gardner,Lois Murphy, Boas, and Bendict, he investigated how children became members of their culture through a summer fellowship. His master thesis was a statistical analysis of the test scores of 200 children under the supervision of Woodworth. Asch received his Master’s degree in 1930. His doctoral dissertation examined whether all learning curves have the same form; H.E. Garrett assigned the topic to him. He received his PhD in 1932.

Asch was exposed to Gestalt psychology through Gardner Murphy, a young faculty member at Columbia at the time. He became much more interested in Gestalt Psychology after he met and worked closesly with his advisor at Columbia Max Wertheimer, one of the founders of Gestalt Psychology. He later became close friends with Wertheimer.