conformity

Question 1

conformity

Answer 1

a change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people

Question 2

Asch’s baseline procedure

Answer 2

123 American men in groups with 5-7 confederates

confederates gave wrong answer on some trials

naive participants conformed 37% of the time

line comparison study

Question 3

group size

Answer 3

1 to 15 confederates

with three confederates, conformity was 32% but little significant increase after

Question 4

unanimity

Answer 4

extent to which all members of a group agree - majority was unanimous when all confederates selected same comparison line - degree of conformity in naive participants

conformity rate dropped with dissenter whether right or wrong

dissenter - non-confirming person

Question 5

task difficulty

Answer 5

stimulus and comparison lines more similar in length

conformity increased - mainly ISI

Question 6

artificial situation and task

Answer 6

P - task and situations were artificial
E - knew it was a research study - demand characteristics
E - trivial - no reason to conform - groups not very group - dont resemble real life groups - Susan Fiske
L - findings do not generalise to real-world situations

Question 7

limited application

Answer 7

P - participants were american men
E - other research suggests women more conformist - concerned with social relationships and being accepted
E - US - individualist culture - collectivist cultures found to have higher conformity rates - Bond and Smith
L - asch’s findings tel us little about conformity in women and other cultures

Question 8

research support

Answer 8

P - other studies support the effects of task difficulty
E - Lucas et al - asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems - participants given answers from three other students (not real)
E - participants conformed more often (agreed with wrong answers) when problems harder
L - Asch correct in claiming task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity

P - Lucas et al’s study found conformity more complex than suggested
E - participants with higher confidence in maths conformed less on hard tasks
E - individual-level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables
L - asch did not research the roles of individual tasks