Conformity : Asch's research

Question 1

Describe Asch’s procedure

Answer 1

To investigate whether people will conform to group pressure even when the correct answer in a task is unambiguous (clear or obvious).123 male undergraduate students who volunteered to take part in a ‘visual discrimination’ task. Laboratory experiment. A single naïve participant was placed into each group with 6-8 confederates. The group sat around a table and the naïve participant always sat either last or 2nd to last so that they could hear the confederates’ responses before giving their own. The group were shown cards with a ‘standard line’ and asked which of three ‘comparison lines’ matched the length of the ‘standard line’. The correct answer was always obvious. However, in 12 critical trials out of 18, the confederates were told to provide the same incorrect response.

Question 2

Describe Asch’s findings

Answer 2

Asch found that 75% of the naïve participants conformed at least once (so 25% did not conform at all) and that the overall conformity rate was 36.8% across all of the critical trials. When the naïve participants were interviewed after the experiment, the majority reported that they knew what the correct answers were but that they conformed to the incorrect answers to avoid rejection by the group (an example of compliance due to normative social influence).

Question 3

What 3 were Asch’s variations?

Answer 3

Group size
Unanimity
Task difficulty

Question 4

Explain Asch’s Group size variation

Answer 4

Procedure: Asch varied the number of confederates who were in the group with the naïve participant; starting from 1 up to 15 confederates.
Results: Asch found that with 3 confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%. But the addition of further confederates made little difference. This shows that there is no need for a majority of more than 3.

Question 5

Explain Asch’s Unanimity variation

Answer 5

Procedure: Asch introduced a ‘dissenter’ (a confederate who told to agree with the naïve participant or provide a completely different answer to the other confederates in order to ‘break the unanimity’ of the group).
Results: The presence of a dissenting confederate meant that conformity was reduced by a quarter from the level it was when the majority was unanimous. The presence of a dissenter enabled the participant to act more independently. Influence of the majority depends on the group being unanimous to an extent.

Question 6

Explain Asch’s Task difficulty variation

Answer 6

Procedure: Asch made the task more difficult by making the ‘standard line’ and three ‘comparison lines’ similar lengths.
Results: This suggests that informational social influence plays a greater role when the task becomes harder. This is because the situation is more ambiguous so we are more likely to look to other people for guidance.

Question 7

“Asch’s study is a child of its time” - Explain what is meant by this.

Answer 7

-When Perrin and Spencer repeated Asch’s study in 1980, only one student conformed out of 396.

-The 1950s (the time when Asch’s study was conducted) was a particularly conformist time in America - it made sense to conform to established norms.

• Meaning that people may have conformed because it was the norm to do so → We now live in a less conformist age, meaning the results would be different i.e. the study is a child of its time.