Conformity: Asch's research Flashcards
What was the aim of Asch’s study?
To research whether people would conform in highly unambiguous situations.
What was the procedure of Asch’s study?
Which type of people were involved?
How many confederates were in each trial and how many naive participants?
- Participants were given a stimulus line and three comparison lines. They had to say which was most similar to the stimulus line. Confederates answered wrong on purpose on some of the trials.
- 123 male white american graduates.
- Between 6 and 8 confederates, and 1 naive participant.
What were Asch’s findings?
Naive participants conformed on 36.8% of the trials.
25% of naive participants didn’t conform, therefore 75% of naive participants did at least once.
What happened when Asch used a majority of three confederates in his group?
Did adding more confederates after this make much difference? What does this show?
Conformity rose to 31.8%.
No. This shows that group size only matters if there are three or more of a majority, conformity will still occur almost the same.
What happened when the naive participant was given a dissenter? What happened to the naive participant?
What does this suggest?
Conformity reduced by a quarter from the level it was when the majority was unanimous.
He behaved more independently.
That the influence of the majority depends on the whole groups unanimity, to an extent.
When the task difficulty was risen, conformity also increased. Why does this suggest that ISI plays a greater role in conformity when the task gets harder?
Because the situation is more ambiguous, the naive participants may have assumed others were right and copied their answers, as they may have doubted themselves as the questions got harder.
A limitation of Asch’s study is that it was a child of its time. Perrin and Spencer repeated his study with engineering students in the UK (1980). Only one student conformed in 396 trials. Why might this be?
Why is it a limitation?
- The 1950’s was an especially conformist time in America, so people may have conformed to social norms then.
- The engineering students may have had a high degree of self-control
- It is a limitation because Asch’s effect is not consistent in different situations and time periods, therefore is not a fundamental feature of human behaviour.
A limitation of Asch’s study was that it was an artificial situation and task. How?
- Demand characteristics may have effected their behaviour
- Trivial task, why not conform? It doesn’t really matter.
- (Fiske) - groups were not ‘groupy’ (didn’t represent groups in ordinary situations)
Why is the fact that only american men were tested a limitation?
Neto- women are more concerned about social acceptance than men are, therefore if it was women, the results may have been very different.
Bond and Smith- cultures such as china are collectivist, compared to the USA which is an individualist culture. This is a limitation because the findings are only applicable to a certain group, lessening the generalisability.
Who found that conformity was higher in a majority of friends than with strangers?
What does this contradict, in terms of Asch’s study?
Williams and Sogon
Participants may have wanted to impress the people around them, as they answered out loud
What ethical issues are associated with Asch’s study?
Naive participant deceived about the fact they were the only genuine participant in the group.
