Asch's research

Question 1

research question

Answer 1

will an individual conform to the majority viewpoint even when the majority are clearly incorrect

Question 2

who were the participants?

Answer 2

123 male US undergraduates who volunteered to take part (certain age group, all American so very westernised so is ethnocentric and volunteered so attract certain type of people)

Question 3

why were choice of participants bad?

Answer 3

-certain age group
-all American so very westernised so is ethnocentric
-volunteered so attract certain type of people

Question 4

what was the stimulus material

Answer 4

-match a standard line with one of 3 comparison lines
-disguised as a visual discrimination task

Question 5

describe the experiment

Answer 5

-groups of 8 participants, one real and 7 confederates
-participants seated around a table and asked to look at 3 lines of diff lengths, 5 confederate before real then 2 confederate after real
-confederates on the critical trials gave the incorrect answer to see if participant would conform

Question 6

how did the trials work in terms of critical and non-critical

Answer 6

-on warm up trials, confederate gave the correct answer
-participants instructed to give the wrong answer on 12 out of 18 trials, known as the critical trials

Question 7

conformity rates for 12 critical trials

Answer 7

-average conformity rate was 33%
-25% participants never conformed on any of critical trials
-75% participants conformed at least once
-half conformed on 6 or more of the trials and one in 20 conformed on all 12

Question 8

how did Asch confirm that the stimulus lines were unambigous

Answer 8

-conducted a control condition without the distraction of confederates giving wrong answers
-found that participants made mistakes about 1% of the time, which didn’t explain high levels of conformity in actual study

Question 9

findings from interviewing participants afterwards

Answer 9

-majority of participants who conformed had privately trusted their own perceptions but changed their public behaviour (compliance)
-dissenters (those that didn’t conform) felt uncomfortable but still had confidence to do so
-yielders (those that did conform) lacked confidence, some even suspected that the group was wrong purposefully

Question 10

what can we conclude from the study

Answer 10

-in a group situation, there’s surprisingly strong tendency to conform even when answer is obvi
-almost 2/3 of trials population remained independent of majority showing people are capable of resisting pressures to conform

Question 11

variables affecting conformity

Answer 11

-group size
-the unanimity of majority
-the difficulty of the task

Question 12

variables affecting conformity (group size)

Answer 12

-Asch found there was very little conformity when majority consisted of just one or two confederates
-proportion of conformity jumped to 30% with a majority of 3

Question 13

variables affecting conformity (the unanimity of the majority)

Answer 13

-when the real participant was given the support of either another real or confederate, conformity levels dropped from 32% to just 5.5%
-if the lone dissenter gave answer completely different from majority and true, conformity dropped from 32% to 9%

Question 14

the unanimity of the majority conclusion

Answer 14

-breaking the groups consensus that was the major factor in conformity reduction

Question 15

variables affecting conformity (Difficulty of the task)

Answer 15

-made the difference much smaller, conformity increased
-lucas et al found that task difficultly is moderated by the self- efficacy (confidence in ability) of the individual

Question 16

conclusion (Difficulty of the task)

Answer 16

-shows that situational differences and individual differences are both important in determining conformity