Asch Conformity Flashcards
Procedure?
- 123 male participants take part in a vision test
- given a line and had to pick out of 3 other options which one seemed to be the closest in length
- naive pp in a room with 7 confederates
- confederates have same wrong answer 12/16 times
How many times did confederate give the same wrong answer?
12/16
What was the error rate and what does this show
- 04%
- how easy the test was
what percentage of pp’s conformed
34%
what does the difference in error rate to conformity rate show?
- it was a big increase
- low error rate shows how easy the test was
give 3 evaluation points-
- cant be generalised
- unconvincing confederates
- only applicable to that time period
name the 3 situational variables of conformity
-task difficulty
-unanimity
size of majority
why cant the study be generalised? (evaluation)
- only used american middle class males
- generalisation would incur beta bias
- didn’t use a wide range of people
- not reflective of other cultures
why is it only applicable to america in that time period? (evaluation)
- test done when mccarthyism was widespread and conformity was a social norm
- cannot be applied to other contexts and lacks temporal validity
what experiment supports that is it only applicable to america in that time period (evaluation)
- perrin and spencer
- conducted later study found 1/400 conformed
- shows ash’s study lacks temporal validity
unconvincing confedertates (evaluation)
- confederates were not convincing enough
- pp’s may have realised and demonstrated conformity as they believed the researcher may have wanted them too
- demand characteristics
- mundane, didn’t reflect real life
explain task difficulty?
- asch made difference in line length closer= harder
- found that conformity rose
- influenced by self efficacy
- lucas et al found that increasing difficulty increased self efficacy eg. maths problems, those more confident were less likely to conform
- links to ISI as the np wants to be correct, situation more ambiguous
explain size of the majority?
-Asch found 13% conformity= 2 confederates
34% conformity= 3 confederates
-further increase made no difference
-BOND AND SMITH FOUND THAT conformity best with 4/5 confederates
-3-7 pp’s optimum point
-NSI and ISI, believe majority is correct+fit in
what is the optimum group size in conformity
3-7
explain unanimity of the majority
- originally all confederates gave same wrong answer
- some confederates disagreed with majority-conformity dropped bellow 25%
- didn’t matter if dissenter gave a different incorrect answer they showed independent behavior
