Conformity: Asch's Research

Question 1

What was Asch’s study?

Answer 1

• participants were told they were taking part in a ‘visual perception task’ and tested with 7-9 confederates
• two white cards were displayed, the first card showed the standard line and the second card showed three comparison lines with one the same length as the standard line
• the group was asked on 18 trials what comparison line was the same as the standard line
• on 12 ‘critical’ trials confederates gave the wrong answer

Question 2

What was Asch’s results?

Answer 2

• conformity was 32% compared to 0.04% for a control group
• 75% of people conformed a minimum on once
• 5% conformed all 12 times

Question 3

Variation 1 of Asch’s study?

Answer 3

Group size

Question 4

What were the results of variation of group size?

Answer 4

• 3% conformity with 1 confederate
• 13% with 2 confederates
• 33% with 3 confederates

Question 5

Variation 2 of Asch’s study?

Answer 5

Unanimity

Question 6

What were the results of variation to unanimity?

Answer 6

• if a confederate just before the participant disagrees with the majority and gives the correct answer conformity drops to 5.5%
• this may give the participant emotional support to disagree

Question 7

Variation 3 of Asch’s study?

Answer 7

task difficulty

Question 8

What were the results of variation of task difficulty?

Answer 8

• Asch made the difference between the line lengths much smaller
• found that conformity increased when the task was more difficult
• this is an informational social influence effect

Question 9

What is a criticism of Asch’s study?

Answer 9

critical research by Perrin and Spencer

Question 10

What did Perrin and Spencer do?

Answer 10

-a replication of Asch’s study with British engineering students

Question 11

What did Perrin and Spencer find?

Answer 11

• found over 396 trials only one student conformed
• means Asch’s study may suffer from temporal validity
• it may have been true in 1950’s America when there was significant political pressure to conform due to the Cold War

Question 12

What is a criticism of Perrin and Spencer’s research?

Answer 12

• due to engineering students being used in this task they are more familiar with measurement than the general population
• biased sample

Question 13

What is a strength of Asch’s research?

Answer 13

supporting research by Rosander

Question 14

What did Rosander do?

Answer 14

• used Facebook , twitter and other online communities to investigate task difficulty in conformity
• logic and general knowledge questions were posted for participants to answer
• online confederates provided wrong answers to half of the participants

Question 15

What did Rosander find?

Answer 15

results showed participants conformed to wrong answers and an increase in conformity with more difficult questions

Question 16

What is a strength of Rosander’s study?

Answer 16

-study demonstrates that Ach’s research is still relevant today and even when not face to face the desire to conform for normative social reasons is still present