Conformity:Asch Flashcards
What is conformity?
A change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of a real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people
What did Asch (1951) devise a procedure to assess?
- to assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others even in a situation where the answer is certain (unambiguous)
What was Asch’s baseline procedure?
- 123 American men were tested
- each p saw two large white cards of a standard line X on one card & the lines A,B,C on the other card as comparison lines
- one of the lines are always clearly the same length as X & other 2 are substantially different
- each trial p’s had to say out loud which of the comparison lines was the same length as line X
How were the participants tested in his baseline procedure?
- in groups of 6 to 8
- only one was a naïve participant & was always seated last or next to the last
- others were all confederates (gave all the incorrect scripted answer)
What was Asch’s baseline findings?
- on average, the genuine p’s agreed with confederates incorrect answers 36.8% of the time
- 25% of p’s never conformed
What 3 variables did Asch investigate that might lead to an increase or decrease in conformity (1955) ?
- group size
- Unanimity
- Task difficulty
What did Asch do in the group size variable?
- increased the size of the group by adding more confederates (total group size was 2-16)
What was Asch’s findings & conclusions from the group size variable?
- found a curvilinear relationship between group size & conformity rate
- conformity increased with group size but only up to a point
- 3 confederates= conformity to wrong answer rose to 31.8%
- suggest people are very sensitive to the views of others as one or two confederates was enough to way opinion
What did Asch do in the unanimity study?
- the extent to which all members of a group agree
- Asch introduced a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates
(one variation they gave the correct answer, in another they gave a different wrong answer)
What was Asch’s findings and conclusions from the unanimity variable?
- genuine p conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter
- rate decreased to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous
- suggests that the influence of the majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous
- non-conformity is more likely when cracks are perceived in the majority’s unanimous view
What did Asch do in the task difficulty study?
- Ash increased the difficulty of the line judging task by making the stimulus line & comparison line more similar in length to see if this would affect degree of conformity
- became harder for the genuine p’s to see the difference between the lines
What was Asch’s findings and conclusions from the
task difficulty variable?
- found that conformity increased
- may be that the situation is more ambiguous when the task becomes harder> unclear what the right answer is
- look to others for guidance as they assume they are right (ISI)
What is a limitation of Asch’s research task and situation?
- task and situation were artificial
- p’s knew they were in a research study & may simply have gone along with what was expected (demand characteristics)
- task of identifying lines was relatively trivial & therefore there was really no reason not to conform
- findings don’t generalise to real- world situations, especially those where the consequences of conformity might be important
What is a limitation of Asch’s sample?
- Asch’s p’s were all American men
- other research suggests women may be more conformist because they are more concerned about social relationships & being accepted
- US is also an individualistic culture > Bond & Smith have found conformity rates are higher in collectivist cultures
- means Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women & people from other cultures = reduced validity
What research support is there for Asch’s research?
- support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty
- Lucas et al asked p’s to solve ‘easy’ & ‘hard’ maths problems
- p’s were given answers from three other students (not real)
- p’s conformed (to wrong answers) more often when the problems were harder
- shows Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity