Conformity - Asch's research

Question 1

define conformity

Answer 1

Conformity- a change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of a real or imagined pressure from a person or a group of people

Question 2

define group size

Answer 2

Group size - asch increased the size of the group by adding or confederates, thus increasing the size of the majority. Conformity increased the group size but only up to a point, levelling off when the majority was greater than three

Question 3

define unanimity

Answer 3

the extent to which all the members in the group agree. In Asch’s studies , the majority was unanimous when all the confederates selected the same comparison line. This produced the greatest degree of conformity in the naive participants

Question 4

define task difficulty

Answer 4

Task difficulty - Asch’s line - judging tasks is more difficult when it becomes harder work to work out the correct answer. Conformity increased because naive participants assume that the majority is more likely to be right

Question 5

what did Solomon Asch do (1951)?

Answer 5

he devised a procedure to assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others ,

even in a situation where the answer is certain

Question 6

why is his procedure described as a baseline study?

Answer 6

because it is the one against which all the later studies were compared to

Question 7

why did Asch (1955) extend his baseline study?

Answer 7

to investigate the variables that might lead to an increase or decrease in conformity

Question 8

what did Asch want to know about group size?

Answer 8

Asch wanted to know if group size would be more important than the agreement of the group

Question 9

how did Asch test the size of the group?

Answer 9

To test this, he varied the number of confederates from one -15 (in total 16)

Question 10

what did Asch find from his results?

Answer 10

Asch found a curvilinear relationship between the group size and conformity rate
Conformity increased with group size , but only up to a point

When three confederates , conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%

But the presence of more confederates made a little difference, the conformity rate soon levelled off

Question 11

therefore, what did Asch conclude from the group size ?

Answer 11

This suggests that most people are very sensitive to the views of others because just one or two confederates was enough to sway one’s opinion

Question 12

what else did Asch want to see could affect conformity?

Answer 12

Unanimity - Asch wondered if the presence of a non-conforming person would affect the naïve participants’ conformity.

Question 13

explain what Asch did to test unanimity?

Answer 13

He introduced a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates

In one variation of the study, this person gave the correct answer and in another variation he gave the wrong one

The genuine participant conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter

The rate decreased to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous

The presence of the dissenter appeared to free the naive participant to behave more independently

This was true even when the dissenter disagreed with the genuine participant

Question 14

what did Asch conclude?

Answer 14

This suggests that the influence of the majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous. And that non-conformity is more likely when cracks are perceived in the majority’s unanimous view

Question 15

what did Asch think about task difficulty?

Answer 15

Asch wanted to know whether making the task harder would affect the degree of conformity

Question 16

how did Asch measure the affect of task difficulty?

Answer 16

He increased the difficulty of line- judging task by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar to each other in length.

This meant it became harder for the genuine participants to see the differences between the lines

Asch found that conformity increased
It may be that the situation is more ambiguous when the task becomes harder
It is unclear to the participants what the right answer is

Question 17

therefore , what did Asch conclude from this ?

Answer 17

In these situations, it is natural to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and you are wrong - this is called Informational Social Influence

Question 18

what was a limitation of Asch’s research?

Answer 18

One limitation of Asch’s research is that the task and situation were artificial

Question 19

why was it a limitation?

Answer 19

Participants knew they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with what was expected demand characteristics

The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and therefore there was really no reason not to conform

Question 20

what did Susan Fiske say?

Answer 20

according to Susan Fiske (2014) ‘Asch’s groups were not very groupie’ - they did not really resemble groups that we experience in everyday life

Question 21

therefore, what does this mean ?

Answer 21

the findings do not generalise to real world situations - especially those where the consequence of conformity might be important

Question 22

what is another limitation of Asch’s study?

Answer 22

all the participants were american men

Question 23

why is this a problem?

Answer 23

other research suggests that women may be more conformist - maybe because they are concerned about social relationships and being accepted (neto 1995)

Question 24

what is a problem about the culture?

Answer 24

the US is an individualist culture - people are more concerned about themselves rather than social groups

conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures -such as china have found conformity rates are higher

Question 25

therefore , what does this mean?

Answer 25

that Asch’s findnings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some other cultures

Question 26

what is a strength of Asch’s study?

Answer 26

support form other studies for the effects of task difficulty

Question 27

example of the strength?

Answer 27

Todd Lucas asked their participants to solve ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ maths questions.

participants were given answers from three students (not actually real)

the participants conformed more often (agreeing with the wrong answers) when the problems were harder

Question 28

therefore, what does this show?

Answer 28

that Asch was correct in claiming that the task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity

Question 29

what is a counterpoint of this idea?

Answer 29

Lucas’s study found that conformity is more complex than Asch suggested

• participants with high confidence in their maths conformed less than those with low confidence

Question 30

therefore , what does this suggest?

Answer 30

that an individual level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables (e.g. task difficulty)

But Asch did not research the role of individual factors