Asch Conformity Experiment

Question 1

What was his aim?

Answer 1

To investigate whether people would conform to the majority in situation where an answer was obvious

Question 2

What size groups were participants tested in?

Answer 2

Groups of 6-8

Question 3

How many lines were each group presented with?

Answer 3

A standard line and 3 comparison lines

Question 4

What did participants have to say aloud?

Answer 4

Which comparison line matched the standard line in length

Question 5

What types of people were in each group?

Answer 5

One genuine participant and the rest were confedersates

Question 6

Where was the genuine participant sat?

Answer 6

Second to last

Question 7

How much did the genuine participants agree with the confederates incorrect answers?

Answer 7

36.8% of the time

Question 8

How much of the sample conformed to the majority on at least one trial?

Answer 8

75%

Question 9

How much of the participants never gave a wrong answer and what does this show?

Answer 9

25%- shows there were individual differences

Question 10

Limitations: (artificial)?

Answer 10

Research is both artificial in both task and situation

Question 11

Demand characteristics?

Answer 11

Participants may have gone along with what was expected as they knew they were in a research study

Question 12

Was the task trivial?

Answer 12

Yes- did not impact the participants in their real life- meaning there was no reason not to conform

Question 13

Real world situations?

Answer 13

Findings do not generalise to real-world situations especially where there could be important consequences to conformity

Question 14

What were the participants like?

Answer 14

All men from the USA

Question 15

What has other research suggested about women?

Answer 15

Women may be more conformist due to their concern with social relationships

Question 16

What culture is the USA?

Answer 16

An individualist

Question 17

Out of 18 trials, how many times did the confederates give the wrong answer?

Answer 17

12

Question 18

What is a strength of Asch’s research?

Answer 18

It has been supported by other studies

Question 19

What did Lucas et al do in 2006?

Answer 19

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

Question 20

What did Lucas et al find about conformity in regards to what Asch had found?

Answer 20

Conformity is more complex than suggested by Asch

Question 21

What else can influence conformity (individual- level factors)?

Answer 21

They found individual- level factors can influence conformity and those who were confident in their maths kills were less likely to conform

Question 22

Did Asch research the roles of individual factors?

Answer 22

No

Question 23

What were the ethical issues?

Answer 23

Genuine (naive) participants were deceived as they thought that the confederates were also participants

Question 24

What can be argued about the ethical cost of the research?

Answer 24

The ethical cost does not outweigh the findings of the research

Question 25

What factors increase/decrease the likelihood of conformity?

Answer 25

Size of group
Individual factors
If the whole group agrees/disagrees

Question 26

How does the size of the group increase the likelihood of conformity?

Answer 26

The bigger the group, the more likely we are to conform

Question 27

What happens when group size is less than 2?

Answer 27

Conformity drops to about 10%

Question 28

What happens when group size hits 3?

Answer 28

Conformity increases to 31.8%

Question 29

When does conformity drop: group size?

Answer 29

When group size is very large- more than 12