Conformity - Asch (1951, 1956) Flashcards
Aim
To examine the extent to which social pressure from a majority could affect a person to conform and to investigate how people would behave in an unambiguous situation.
Procedure
- Laboratory experiment.
- Sample of 123 American, male undergraduate students tested.
- Split into groups of 8-10 with 7-9 confederates and one real participant.
- All of the participants were seated in a semi-circle.
- The true participant was always the last or second to last participant.
- Informed they were taking a vision test.
- Asch showed them a series of lines (a standard line and all the possible answers).
- They were asked which of the 3 lines was the same length as the test line. Confederates and participants were then asked to respond verbally.
- Initially, 6 control trials were conducted where confederates gave the correct answers. Then, the confederates were instructed to give the same incorrect answer on 12 critical trials out of 18 trials unanimously.
Findings
- The measure of conformity was how often the real participant conformed to the majority’s incorrect answers despite the evidence of their senses.
- Asch’s study showed a significant degree of conformity.
- On 36.8% of the critical trials (those where the confederates gave the same wrong answer), the true participant conformed (gave the same wrong answer).
- 75% of the participants conformed at least once.
- 5% conformed every time
- 25% of the participants never conformed at all, however, did report feeling tension and doubt..
- Asch also used a control group, in which one real participant completed the same experiment without any confederates. He found that less than 1% of the participants gave an incorrect answer.
- Asch debriefed participants and identified 3 types of conformity:
1) Distortion of perception - a few participants reported being unaware their judgements were wrong.
2) Distortion of judgement - most participants thought their own perception was wrong and so yielded to the majority.
3) Distortion of action - a few participants knew their perception was accurate but didn’t want to be a minority and so conformed.
Conclusion
The findings demonstrate the power of majority influence. The participants’ behaviour was a case of internalisation for the majority and compliance for the minority.People will conform to the majority view even when the answer is clearly incorrect perhaps for social approval, to avoid rejection or being seen as an outcast.
Asch (1956) - The Variation
1) Group Size
2) Unanimity
3) Task Difficulty
How the size of the majority affects conformity
- These variations ranged from having 1 confederate to 15 confederates, and the level of conformity varied dramatically.
- When there was 1 confederate, the real participants conformed on just 3% of the critical trials.
- When the group size increased to 2 confederates, the real participants conformed on 12.8% of the critical trials.
- When there were 3 confederates, the real participants conformed on 32% of the critical trials, relatively the same percentage as Asch’s original experiment, in which there were 7-9 confederates.
- Found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity - conformity increased with the presence of more confederates but only to a point.
- Essentially, the presence of a small, unanimous group has a strong social pressure, but beyond a certain point, the group size does not proportionally increase this pressure.
How group agreement in the majority affects conformity
- In one variation of Asch’s experiment, one of the confederates was instructed to give the correct answer throughout. In this variation, the rate of conformity dropped to 5.5%.
- In another variation, one of the confederates gave a different incorrect answer to the majority. In this variation, conformity still dropped significantly (by 9%).
- This suggests that the presence of a dissenter provides social support.
How making the task harder affects conformity
- In Asch’s baseline, the correct answer was always obvious and conformity was 36.8%.
- In one of his variations, he made the task more difficult, by making the difference between the line lengths significantly smaller, making the situation more ambiguous. In this variation, Asch found the rate of conformity increased, although he didn’t report the percentage.
- He argued that this was due to participants being more uncertain about their judgements, making them more susceptible to informational social influence.
Weakness
Point: A major limitation of Asch’s conformity study is that it lacked mundane realism in several key aspects, including the task, setting, and group composition.
Evidence: The task of judging line lengths was artificial and trivial, with no real consequence for getting it wrong. This is not reflective of most real-life situations where conformity has social or emotional stakes. Furthermore, participants were aware that they were in a study, which could have led them to display demand characteristics - behaving in a way they thought the researcher wanted. Additionally, responses were given aloud in front of a group of strangers, and these groups were not natural social groups, which limits how well they represent typical social interactions. Supporting this, Fiske (2014) argued that Asch’s groups did not resemble real-life groups.
Justification: These factors all contribute to the artificiality of the study. Since the task was simple and insignificant, participants may have conformed due to boredom or indifference, rather than actual social pressure. The possibility of demand characteristics also questions whether true conformity was being measured. Moreover, real-life conformity often occurs within familiar and emotionally significant groups, unlike the anonymous, temporary groups used in the study.
Implication: Therefore, Asch’s findings may not accurately reflect how people conform in everyday life, therefore lowering the ecological validity of the study due to the unrealistic task and setting and perhaps the internal validity too as the observed conformity might not have been genuine. As a result, the applicability of these findings to real-world social influence is limited.
Counterargument: Although Asch’s study has been criticised for its inauthenticity, it is still highly valuable for its experimental control, enabling us to understand how specific isolated variables relate to conformity.
Evidence: Asch’s research was conducted in a controlled laboratory setting using a standardised procedure and a clearly measurable and operationalised task — judging line lengths. This allowed Asch to manipulate the independent variable (group pressure) and measure its direct effect on the dependent variable (level of conformity), while controlling for extraneous variables, e.g., individual differences amongst participants.
Justification: While the line-judging task may not reflect real-world social decision-making, its simplicity ensured consistency across trials and participants. This not only allowed for accurate replication in future studies but also increased the internal validity of the findings, as the study could reliably demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship between group influence and conformity behaviour through its standardised procedure.
Implication: Therefore, despite its artificial nature and limited ecological validity, Asch’s study remains highly valuable in the field of social psychology. Its careful control and relevant manipulation of variables laid a strong foundation for understanding the mechanisms of conformity, and it continues to inform modern research by providing a reliable and replicable model for investigating social influence.
Weakness
Point: A limitation of Asch’s study is that it was culturally biased.
Evidence: All of the participants were American, and the USA is considered an individualist culture - where individuals tend to prioritise personal goals and independence over group goals.
Justification: This is important because it tells us little about collectivist cultures, such as China or Japan, where conformity rates may differ, suggesting that cultural context plays a significant role in influencing the extent to which individuals conform.
Implication: This limits the generalisability of Asch’s study to different cultures, therefore restricting its applicability to collectivist societies, where social norms and group pressures may influence behaviour differently.
Counterargument: Although Asch’s research has been criticised for cultural bias due to being conducted in an individualist culture (the USA), its standardised procedure has allowed for replicability across cultures.
Evidence: Such controlled methodology in Asch’s line judgement task has enabled numerous implications of the study in a wide range of cultural contexts. For instance, a meta-analysis by Bond, which reviewed 133 replications of Asch’s study across 17 countries, found consistent support for Asch’s original findings. However, it also revealed that conformity rates were significantly higher in collectivist cultures compared to individualist ones.
Justification: This suggests that while the original study may have cultural limitations, its methodological consistency has allowed researchers to explore how conformity operates in different societies. The findings highlight how cultural norms influence the degree of conformity—such as the emphasis on social harmony and consensus in collectivist cultures versus independence in individualist ones.
Implication: Therefore, despite its cultural bias, Asch’s study retains considerable scientific and practical value by laying a foundation for cross-cultural research into conformity, allowing psychologists to better understand the impact of societal values on behaviour.
Weakness
Point: A limitation of Asch’s research is that it raises several ethical concerns.
Evidence: Participants in Asch’s study were deceived about the true purpose of the experiment. They were led to believe it was a study on vision, and were unaware that the other individuals present were confederates intentionally giving wrong answers. Because of this deception, participants were also unable to give fully informed consent, as they did not know exactly what they were agreeing to take part in.
Justification: Through this, the study fails to consider the psychological effects the participants may have endured through being deceived, such as confusion, humiliation and distrust towards psychological researchers.
Implication: Therefore, such ethical issues may undermine the integrity of psychological research, potentially deterring individuals from participating in future studies and damaging public trust in the discipline. This could limit the progress of psychological understanding and reduce the opportunities to apply research findings to real-world problems.
Counterargument: However, despite the ethical concerns in Asch’s study, they were arguably necessary to maintain the aim of the research.
Evidence: If participants had been fully informed about the true purpose of the study - that it was investigating conformity - they may have altered their behaviour, either by deliberately resisting the group or trying to meet the expectations of the researchers.
Justification: This would introduce demand characteristics, ultimately rendering the findings meaningless as it is not measuring true conformity. The use of deception ensured that participants responded naturally to the group pressure, thereby allowing genuine conformity behaviour to be observed.
Implication: Therefore, although the study may not fully adhere to modern ethical standards, the methodological decisions taken by compromising the participants’ full awareness, helped ensure that the results were psychologically insightful and internally valid in demonstrating genuine social pressures. Despite the ethical trade-off, the scientific value of the findings outweighs its ethical costs - helping to prevent destructive conformity in real-world scenarios.
Weakness
Point: A limitation of Asch’s research is its androcentric nature.
Evidence: Asch’s sample consisted of 123 males and despite its advantageous sample size, the predominant focus on males limits the extent to which findings can be applied to females. Research has even suggested that females may be more conformist than males, perhaps because women tend to be more focused on maintaining social relationships and group harmony.
Justification: This means that the results of Asch’s study may not accurately reflect the behaviour of both genders. If women are more likely to conform, the overall conformity rates might have been higher had the sample included female participants, suggesting that gender may be a key factor influencing conformity.
Implication: As a result, the findings lack population validity, as they cannot be confidently generalised to females. This highlights the need for further research using more diverse samples to explore possible gender differences in conformity behaviour.
