conformity: asch's research

Question 1

what is conformity?

Answer 1

‘a change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people’ (aronson 2011)

Question 2

what was the aim of solomon asch’s (1951) research?

Answer 2

to assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others, even in a situation where the answer is certain

Question 3

describe asch’s baseline procedure with standard and comparison lines

Answer 3

• 123 american men were tested, each one in a group with other apparent participants
• there were two large white cards where there was the standard line ‘X’ on the left and lines A, B, and C as comparison lines on the right
• one of the comparison lines was always clearly the same was the length of X
• participants had to say out loud which of the comparison lines was the same length was X

Question 4

describe the physical arrangement of the participants in asch’s study

Answer 4

• tested in groups of 6 to 8
• only one was genuine (naive) and was always seated either last or next to last
• others were confederates who gave the incorrect answer each time
• the genuine participant did not know the others were ‘fake’ participants

Question 5

what were asch’s findings based on the baseline study?

Answer 5

• genuine participants agreed with the confederates’ incorrect answer 36.8% of the time
• 25% never gave a wrong answer (ie. never conformed)
• 75% conformed at least once

Question 6

what 3 variables did asch (1955) investigate that might lead to an increase or decrease in conformity?

Answer 6

1. group size
2. unanimity
3. task difficulty

Question 7

how did group size affect conformity?

Answer 7

• he varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15 (so total group size was 2-16)
• curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate
  > conformity increased with group size, but only up to a point
• with 3 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%
• presence of more than 3 confederates made little difference and the conformity rate soon levelled off
• most people are very sensitive to the views of others as just one or two confederates was enough to sway opinion

Question 8

how did unanimity affect conformity?

Answer 8

• introduced a confederate who disagreed with other confederates
• this person either gave the correct answer or gave a (different) wrong one
• genuine pp conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter
  > allowed naive pp to behave more independently, even when the dissenter disagreed with the genuine pp
• rate decreased to less than 1/4 of the level it was when the majority was unanimous
• influence of majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous; non-conformity is more likely when cracks are perceived in majority’s unanimous view

Question 9

how did task difficulty affect conformity?

Answer 9

• increased the difficulty of line-judging task by making stimulus and comparison lines more similar in length
  > harder for genuine pp to see differences between lines
• conformity increased
• may be because situation becomes more ambiguous when task becomes harder
• in these circumstances, it is natural to look to other people for guidance and assume they are right and you are wrong (ISI)

Question 10

evaluation: task and situation were artificial

Answer 10

• demand characteristics since participants knew they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with what was expected
• task of identifying lines was trivial so there was no reason not to conform
• susan diske (2014) said asch’s groups did not resemble groups we experience in everyday life
• findings cannot be generalised to real-world situations, especially when consequences of conformity may be important

Question 11

evaluation: limited application as all of asch’s participants were american men

Answer 11

• other research suggests women may be more conformist possibly because they are more concerned about social relationships and being accepted (neto 1995)
• US is an individualist culture (where people are more concerned about themselves rather than their social group)
• similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures (eg. china, where social group is more important than individual) have found higher conformity rates (bond and smith 1996)
• asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures

Question 12

evaluation: support form other studies for effects of task difficulty

Answer 12

• todd lucas et al. (2006) asked pp to solve ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ maths problems.
• pp were given from 3 other fake students
• pp conformed more often when tasks were harder
• shows that asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is a variable that affects conformity

Question 13

evaluation: limitations of research support

Answer 13

• lucas et al.’s study found that conformity is more complex than asch suggested
• pp with high confidence in their maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence
• an individual-level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables, but asch did not research the role of individual factors

Question 14

evaluation: ethical issues

Answer 14

• naive participants were deceived as they thought other people involved in the procedure (confederates) were also genuine participants like themselves
• this ethical cost should be weighed up against the benefits gained from this study