conformity: asch's research Flashcards
how many participants + confederates were there in each group?
1 participant
7-9 confederates
how many participants were there in total?
123
describe Asch’s sample
American, male, highly educated
on how many trials did the confederates give the same incorrect answer?
12/18
where was the naive participant seated?
towards the end (normally in penultimate seat)
what was the group shown as part of the task?
2 cards - 1 standard line on first card + 3 comparison lines on second card
what was the experiment type?
lab experiment
what was the experimental design?
repeated measures
what % of the time did participants agree with the incorrect answer?
36.8%
what % of participants never conformed to the incorrect answer?
25%
name 2 reasons why participants conformed
~ they didn’t want to ‘spoil’ results
~ they felt ‘I am wrong, they are right’
name 2 reasons why participants were independent
~ they were confident in their judgement
~ they felt they had to ‘call it as they saw it’
how were confederate numbers varied during ‘group size’?
Asch varied the number of confederates from 1-15
what happened to conformity rate when there were 15 confederates?
conformity rate dropped as participants became suspicious
true or false? conformity increased with group size
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)
what did the conformity rate rise to when there were 3 confederates?
31.8%
how did Asch make the task more difficult?
he made the line lengths more similar
what type of social influence is at work and why? (during ‘task difficulty’)
ISI - individuals look to others for guidance when they don’t know the answer as they don’t want to appear foolish
what was the conformity rate when one confederate gave the correct answer throughout?
conformity dropped to 5% - more likely to resist conformity if there’s support for your beliefs
what was the conformity rate when one confederate gave a different wrong answer to the majority?
conformity dropped to 9% - conformity is reduced if you break unanimity, even if a different answer is incorrect
why does Asch’s research have a limited application in terms of gender?
all participants were men - other research suggests women may be more conformist (due to social relationships + wanting to be accepted)
why does Asch’s research have a limited application in terms of culture?
all participants were American + USA is an individualist culture - similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures have found that conformity rate is higher
how does Lucas et. al.’s research support Asch’s research into task difficulty?
participants had to solve easy + hard maths problems. they were given answers of 3 (made-up) students. participants conformed more when problems were harder
how does Lucas et. al.’s research also provide a counterpoint to Asch’s research?
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)
how may ethical issues be involved in this research?
naive participants were deceived as they thought the confederates involved were also genuine participants
name one other limitation of this research
artificial situation + task
how may demand characteristics be involved in this research?
participants knew they were in a research study + may have gone along with what was expected (rather than their own genuine behaviour)
how else was the situation/task artificial?
~ 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
