Asch Conformity Experiment Flashcards
What was his aim?
To investigate whether people would conform to the majority in situation where an answer was obvious
What size groups were participants tested in?
Groups of 6-8
How many lines were each group presented with?
A standard line and 3 comparison lines
What did participants have to say aloud?
Which comparison line matched the standard line in length
What types of people were in each group?
One genuine participant and the rest were confedersates
Where was the genuine participant sat?
Second to last
How much did the genuine participants agree with the confederates incorrect answers?
36.8% of the time
How much of the sample conformed to the majority on at least one trial?
75%
How much of the participants never gave a wrong answer and what does this show?
25%- shows there were individual differences
Limitations: (artificial)?
Research is both artificial in both task and situation
Demand characteristics?
Participants may have gone along with what was expected as they knew they were in a research study
Was the task trivial?
Yes- did not impact the participants in their real life- meaning there was no reason not to conform
Real world situations?
Findings do not generalise to real-world situations especially where there could be important consequences to conformity
What were the participants like?
All men from the USA
What has other research suggested about women?
Women may be more conformist due to their concern with social relationships
What culture is the USA?
An individualist
Out of 18 trials, how many times did the confederates give the wrong answer?
12
What is a strength of Asch’s research?
It has been supported by other studies
What did Lucas et al do in 2006?
Asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems and found that participants conformed to the wrong answer more often when the problems were hard
What did Lucas et al find about conformity in regards to what Asch had found?
Conformity is more complex than suggested by Asch
What else can influence conformity (individual- level factors)?
They found individual- level factors can influence conformity and those who were confident in their maths kills were less likely to conform
Did Asch research the roles of individual factors?
No
What were the ethical issues?
Genuine (naive) participants were deceived as they thought that the confederates were also participants
What can be argued about the ethical cost of the research?
The ethical cost does not outweigh the findings of the research
What factors increase/decrease the likelihood of conformity?
Size of group
Individual factors
If the whole group agrees/disagrees
How does the size of the group increase the likelihood of conformity?
The bigger the group, the more likely we are to conform
What happens when group size is less than 2?
Conformity drops to about 10%
What happens when group size hits 3?
Conformity increases to 31.8%
When does conformity drop: group size?
When group size is very large- more than 12
