Social Manipulation

With all this talk about manipulation I can't help but think of the social psychology principles that work to explain how people are manipulated by others when placed in a social situation. One important principle is that of conformity, which psychologist Solomon Asch experimented with in the 1950s. Here's a pretty entertaining video of one of his experiments that documents how one person can be easily manipulated by a majority group:

P.S. I was laughing while watching this, but then again, was I laughing because I really though it was funny or was I being manipulated by the background laughing track?