conformity: asch's research

Question 1

how many participants + confederates were there in each group?

Answer 1

1 participant
7-9 confederates

Question 2

how many participants were there in total?

Answer 2

123

Question 3

describe Asch’s sample

Answer 3

American, male, highly educated

Question 4

on how many trials did the confederates give the same incorrect answer?

Answer 4

12/18

Question 5

where was the naive participant seated?

Answer 5

towards the end (normally in penultimate seat)

Question 6

what was the group shown as part of the task?

Answer 6

2 cards - 1 standard line on first card + 3 comparison lines on second card

Question 7

what was the experiment type?

Answer 7

lab experiment

Question 8

what was the experimental design?

Answer 8

repeated measures

Question 9

what % of the time did participants agree with the incorrect answer?

Answer 9

36.8%

Question 10

what % of participants never conformed to the incorrect answer?

Answer 10

25%

Question 11

name 2 reasons why participants conformed

Answer 11

~ they didn’t want to ‘spoil’ results
~ they felt ‘I am wrong, they are right’

Question 12

name 2 reasons why participants were independent

Answer 12

~ they were confident in their judgement
~ they felt they had to ‘call it as they saw it’

Question 13

how were confederate numbers varied during ‘group size’?

Answer 13

Asch varied the number of confederates from 1-15

Question 14

what happened to conformity rate when there were 15 confederates?

Answer 14

conformity rate dropped as participants became suspicious

Question 15

true or false? conformity increased with group size

Answer 15

true - but only up to a certain point (e.g. after 3 confederates, conformity rates soon levelled off as the presence of more made little difference)

Question 16

what did the conformity rate rise to when there were 3 confederates?

Answer 16

31.8%

Question 17

how did Asch make the task more difficult?

Answer 17

he made the line lengths more similar

Question 18

what type of social influence is at work and why? (during ‘task difficulty’)

Answer 18

ISI - individuals look to others for guidance when they don’t know the answer as they don’t want to appear foolish

Question 19

what was the conformity rate when one confederate gave the correct answer throughout?

Answer 19

conformity dropped to 5% - more likely to resist conformity if there’s support for your beliefs

Question 20

what was the conformity rate when one confederate gave a different wrong answer to the majority?

Answer 20

conformity dropped to 9% - conformity is reduced if you break unanimity, even if a different answer is incorrect

Question 21

why does Asch’s research have a limited application in terms of gender?

Answer 21

all participants were men - other research suggests women may be more conformist (due to social relationships + wanting to be accepted)

Question 22

why does Asch’s research have a limited application in terms of culture?

Answer 22

all participants were American + USA is an individualist culture - similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures have found that conformity rate is higher

Question 23

how does Lucas et. al.’s research support Asch’s research into task difficulty?

Answer 23

participants had to solve easy + hard maths problems. they were given answers of 3 (made-up) students. participants conformed more when problems were harder

Question 24

how does Lucas et. al.’s research also provide a counterpoint to Asch’s research?

Answer 24

participants with high confidence in maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence. shows that an individual-level factor can influence conformity with situational variables (Asch didn’t research this)

Question 25

how may ethical issues be involved in this research?

Answer 25

naive participants were deceived as they thought the confederates involved were also genuine participants

Question 26

name one other limitation of this research

Answer 26

artificial situation + task

Question 27

how may demand characteristics be involved in this research?

Answer 27

participants knew they were in a research study + may have gone along with what was expected (rather than their own genuine behaviour)

Question 28

how else was the situation/task artificial?

Answer 28

~ findings don’t generalise to real-world situations, especially where consequences of conformity may be important
~ Asch’s groups didn’t really resemble groups that we experience in everyday life
~ task of identifying lines was relatively trivial + there was no reason to not conform