Asch and variables affecting conformity

Question 1

Procedure

Answer 1

123 male American undergrad students
3 lines of differing lengths and had to select which was closet in length to the standard line
Participant believed they were taking part in a visual discrimination task
Didn’t realise that there was only one real participant with 6 confederates
On 12 of the trials (critical trials) there was an obvious answer but the confederates all gave the same incorrect answer
Wanted to see if participants would conform to group pressure

Question 2

Findings

Answer 2

Critical trials - 33% conformity rate
25% didn’t conform on any of the trials
5% conformed on all of the trials
Control condition without the distraction of confederates - mistakes made 1% of the time
In interviews after the study carried out by Asch, majority of participants said they believed their judgement was correct but gave a different answer to avoid disapproval from the group. Some actually believed they were seeing the lines incorrectly

Question 3

Variables affecting conformity - group size

Answer 3

Majority of only one or two confederates resulted in little conformity
Three confederates increased conformity to about 30%
Further increases didn’t substantially increase conformity

Question 4

Variables affecting conformity - unanimity of the majority

Answer 4

Participant given support from either another participant or confederate
Or, lone dissenter gave an answer which was different from the majority but still not the correct answer
5% conformity rate when dissenter agreed with the participant
9% conformity rate when they agrees with neither the participant nor the group

Question 5

Variables affecting conformity - difficulty of the task

Answer 5

Here the difference in length between the lines was made smaller
This increased conformity levels

Question 6

AO3

Answer 6

Research support - meta analysis of 97 replications of this study across the world and found average conformity of 29%. Individualistic cultures like UK and US were less conformist than collectivist cultures like Japan and Hong Kong
Low population validity
Child of its time - during this time America was in a period known as McCarthyism which was extremely anti-communist where people were scared to go against the majority and so more likely to conform.
Ethical issues - participants were deceived at the outset of the study, however could be said that this was essential for the nature of this experiment