Conformity: Asch's Research

Question 1

Conformity: Asch (1951)

Baseline Procedure

Answer 1

• Devised a procedure to assess the extent to which people will conform to the opinion of others.
• This includes situations where the answer is unambigious.
• The original procedure is referred to as the baseline study, with which later research was compared.

Question 2

Conformity: Asch (1951)

Group Size

Variables

Answer 2

• Wanted to know whether the size of a group would be more important than the agreement of the group.
• Asch varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15.
• Found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity as the rate increased with group size until a certain point.
• With three confederates conformity rose to 31.8%, but the presence of more made little difference.

Suggests people are sensitive to the views of others because just one or two confederates was enough to sway opinion.

Question 3

Conformity: Asch (1951)

Unanimity

Variables

Answer 3

• Asch wondered if the presence of a non-conforming person would affect the naive participant’s conformity.
• He introduced a confederate that disagreed with the others - sometimes giving correct answers and other giving incorrect.
• The conformity rate decreased to less than a quarter with the presence of a dissenter - meaning the participant behaved more independently.

Suggests the influence of the majority depends on it being unanimous.

Question 4

Conformity: Asch (1951)

Task Difficulty

Variables

Answer 4

• Wanted to know if making the tasks harder would affect conformity.
• He increased the difficulty of the line judging task by making the comparison lines more similar to the stimulus line.
• Asch found that conformity increased as the task became more ambigious and the participant looks to others for guideance, assuming they are right.
• This is informational social influence (ISI)

Question 5

Asch’s Research: Evaluation

Artificial Tasks

Limitation

Answer 5

• The task and situation were artificial.
• Participants knew they were in a research study and may have simply gone along with what was expected (demand characteristics)
• The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and there was no reason not to conform.
• The groups did not entirely resemble groups we might experience in everyday life.

This means findings do not generalise to real-world situations, especially where the consequences of conformity are important.

Question 6

Asch’s Research: Evaluation

Limited Application

Limitation

Answer 6

• Asch’s research was conducted on American men.
• Research has suggested woman may be more conformist because they are concerned with social relationships.
• Additionally, similar studies in collectivist countries found conformity rates were higher.

This means Asch’s research findings tell us little about conformity in woman and people from other cultures.

Question 7

Asch’s Research: Evaluation

Research Support

Strength

Answer 7

• There is research support for the effects of task difficulty.
• Lucas (2006) asked their participants to solve easy and hard maths questions.
• Participants were given answers from other students and they conformed more often when the problems were harder - showing Asch was correct.
• However, Lucas found it is more complex than Asch suggested. Participants with greater maths confidence conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence.

This suggests that although Asch is correct in suggesting task difficulty effects conformity, individual factors can also influence this.