Asch's Study on Conformity Flashcards
Aim
To assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others even in a situation where the answer is unambiguous
Procedures
123 male American pps, each one in a group of 6 to 8 with confederates - had to identify if line A B or C was the same length of standard line (one line is clearly the same lenght)
Seated either last or next to last and confederates all gave the same incorrect answer each time
Baseline findings
The genuine pps agreed with confederates 36.8% of the time (about a third)
Individual differences - 25% of pps never gave wrong answer - didn’t conform
Group Size Variable
Wanted to know if group size was more more important than group agreement - varied number of confederates from 1 to 15
Found: curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate but only up to a certain point
- -> With 3, conformity to wrong answer rose to 31.8%
- –> But more after that made little difference - rate leveled off
suggests most people are sensitive to others’ views as just 1 or 2 was enough to sway opinion
Unanimity Variable
Effect of a non conforming person on naive pps conformity
In one variation, they gave the correct answer and in other gave a different wrong answer
Genuine pp conformed less - rate decreased to less than a 1/4 of the level with unanimous majority
Appeared to free naive pp to behave independently even when dissenter was wrong
suggests infleunce of majority depends largely on being unanimous
Task Difficulty Variable
Increased difficulty by making stimulus line and comparison lines more similar to each other in length - harder to see difference
Found: conformity increased as the situation was more ambiguous - unclear to pps what was correct
thus, its natural to look to others for guidance and assume they are right (ISI)
Artificial Situation + Task - AO3
LIMITATION - pps knew they were in a research study and may have just gone along with what was expected (demand characteristics)
- Task of identifying lines is rather trivial and there’s no reason to not conform
- Fiske (2014) - ‘Asch’s groups weren’t very groupy’ i.e. didn’t resemble groups that we experience in real life
Means findings don’t generalise to real world situations especially those where the consequences of conformity may be important
Limited Application - AO3
Only American men used
- Other research suggests that woman may be more conformist possibly due to concern about social relationships and being accepted (Neto 1995)
- The USA is an individualist culture - conformity studies in collectivist cultures (e.g. China) rates were higher (Bond and Smith 1996)
means Asch’s findings tells us little about conformity in women and those from other cultures
Research Support - AO3
Support from other studies on effects on task difficulty
- Lucas et al (2006) - pps had to solve ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ maths problems + were given answer from 3 other students (not actually real)
pps conformed more often to wrong answers when problems were harder
Shows Asch was correct in claiming task difficulty is a variable that affects conformity
COUNTERPOINT on Research Support
Lucas et al’s study found conformity to be more complex than Asch’s suggested argument
Pps with high confidence in maths ability conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence
Shows that an individual level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables like task difficulty which Asch did’t research
Ethical issues - AO3
While Asch’s research increased our knowledhe on why people conform which may help avaoid mindless destructive conformity
–> naive pps were deceived as they thought others in procedure were also geniune pps
HOWEVER it is worth bearing in mind that the ethical cost should be weighted up against the benefits gained from the study
