Conformity - Asch

Question 1

What is 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

Question 2

Asch (1951) procedure

Answer 2

123 American male participants judged line lengths, stating which line (A, B or C) was closest in length to the standard line. Confederates deliberately gave wrong answers on 12/18 trials. The naïve participant answered second to last

Question 3

Asch (1951) findings

Answer 3

Naïve participants conformed on 36.8% of trials, 25% never conformed

Question 4

What variables did Asch investigate?

Answer 4

Group size, unanimity and task difficulty

Question 5

How did group size affect conformity?

Answer 5

Conformity increased with group size, but only up to a point (31.8%), levelling off when the majority was greater than three. This is a curvilinear relationship

Question 6

How did unanimity affect conformity?

Answer 6

By introducing a dissenter, therefore reducing unanimity, conformity decreased to 5%

Question 7

How did task difficulty affect conformity?

Answer 7

By making the lines more similar, and therefore increasing task difficulty, conformity increased. Perhaps due to informational social influence (ISI)

Question 8

Strengths of Asch (1951)

Answer 8

• High internal validity (eg. Lab experiment with high control over extraneous and confounding variables)
• Research support for task difficulty (eg. Lucas found conformity to incorrect maths answers increased with difficulty)

Question 9

Limitations of Asch (1951)

Answer 9

• Lacks ecological validity (eg. Artificial situation and task, lacking mundane realism)
• Lacks population validity (eg. 123 male American undergraduates, ignoring collectivist cultures)
• Lacks temporal validity (eg. Perrin & Spencer 1980 found less than 1% conformity with engineering students)