CONFORMITY: ASCH'S RESEARCH

Question 1

PROCEDURE

Answer 1

• showed pmts 2 large white cards at a time
• one was a ‘standard line’, the other had 3 ‘comparison lines’
• one of the 3 lines were the same length as the standard and the other 2 were substantially different.
  123 American male undergraduates:
• 6 confederates, 1 real ppt
• all confederates instructed to give the same wrong answer
• 18 trials total, 12 = ‘critical trials’ (wrong answer given)

Question 2

FINDINGS

Answer 2

• naive ppt gave a wrong answer 36.8% of the time
• overall, 25% of the ppts did not conform on any
• 75% conformed at least once
• when pmts interviewed after, they said they confirmed to avoid rejection (NSI)

Question 3

ASCH’S VARIATIONS

Answer 3

1) GROUP SIZE
- with 3 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose 31.8%
- the addition of further confederates mad little difference
- suggests there is no need for a majority of more than 3
2) UNANIMITY:
- introduced a dissenting confederate who disagreed with th others
- conformity was REDUCED by 1/4 compared to when the majority was unanimous
- enabled naive ppt to behave more independently
3) TASK DIFFICULTY:
- made line-judging task more difficult
- conformity increased under these conditions
- suggests that ISI plays a greater role when the task becomes harder
- this is because the situation is more ambiguous, so more likely to look to other people for guidance and assume they are right.

Question 4

AO3: A CHILD OF ITS TIME

Answer 4

PERRIN & SPENCER (1980):
- repeated Asch’s original study with engineering students in the UK
- only 1 student conformed in a total of 396 trials
- possible that the 1950s (when Asch’s study was) were a conformist time in America, therefore made sense to conform to established social norms
- society has changed a lot since then, people are less conformist today
- LACKS TEMPORAL VALDITY
- Asch effect is not consistent across situation and may not be consistent across time, so is not a fundamental feature of human behaviour.

Question 5

AO3: ARTIFICIAL SITUATION AND TASK

Answer 5

• ppts knew they were in a research study –> DEMAND CHARACTERISTICS
• task of identifying lines was relatively trivial, therefore there was really no reason not to conform
• naive ppts did not resemble groups that we are part of in everyday life
• findings do not generalise to everyday situations
• especially true where the consequences of conformity might be more important, and we interact with others in groups more directly
• LOW MUNDANE REALISM
• LOW EXTERNAL VALIDITY

Question 6

AO3: LIMITED APPLICATION OF FINDINGS

Answer 6

• only men were tested
• other research suggests women might be MORE conformist, possibly because they are more concerned about social relationships than men
• men in Asch’s study were American (INDIVIDUALIST)
• similar studies conducted in COLLECTIVIST cultures: conformity = higher –> culture is more oriented to group needs
• did not take gender and cultural differences into account
  I&D: ETHICAL ISSUES: ppts were deceived BUT cost-benefit analysis

Question 7

AO3: RESEARCH SUPPORT

Answer 7

• support for the effects of task difficulty
  LUCAS ET AL (2006) asked ppts to solve ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ maths problems
• ppts given wrong answers from 3 other students
• ppts conformed more often when the problems were harder
• Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable affecting conformity
  COUNTER –> Lucas’ study found that conformity is more complex than Asch suggested.
• ppts with high confidence in their maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks compared to those with low confidence
• shows an individual-level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variable
• Asch did not research these individual factors