conformity- social influence

Question 1

what was aschs baseline procedure

Answer 1

devised procedure assess what extent people will conform to opinion of others even in situation where answer certain

Question 2

what are variables invesitgated by asch

Answer 2

group size- asch wanted to know whether size of group more important than agreement of group, vaired number of confederates from 1-15, vurvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate, conformity increased with group size but only to a point, three confederates conformity to wrong answer rose to 31.8%, presence of more confederates made little difference- conformity rate levelled off, people sensitive to views of others because one or two confederates enough to sway opinion
unanimity- asch wondered if presence of non conforming person affect naive pps conformity, introduced confederate who disagreed with other confederates, person gave correct answer and in another variation he gave wrong one, genuine pp cnoformed less often in presence of dissenter, rate decreased to less than quarter of level it was when majorty was unanimous, presence of dissenter appeared to free nairve pp behave more independently, true even when dissenter disagreed with genuine pp, suggest influence of majority depnds to large extent on it being unanimous, non conofmrity more likely whe cracks are perceived in majoritys unanimous view
task difficulty- wanted to know whether making the task harder would affect degree of conformity, increased difficulty line judging task by making stimulus line and comparison lines more similar to each other in length, became harder for genuine pps to see differences between lines, conformity increased, situation more ambiguous when task becomes harder, unclear to pps what answer right, natural to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and you are wrong- informational social influence

Question 3

what is artifical situation and task

Answer 3

task and situation artificial
pps knew in research study and may simply have gone along with what was expected
task identifying lines relatively trivial and there was really no reason not to conform
fiske- aschs groups not very groupy
means findings dont generalise to real world situations- those where consequences of conformity might be important

Question 4

what is limited application

Answer 4

aschs pps american men
other research suggest women may be more conformist concenred about social relationships and being accepted
us is indivifualist culture
conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures found conformity rates hgiher
aschs findings tells little about conformity in woemna dn people from some cultures

Question 5

what is research support

Answer 5

support from other studies for effects of task difficulty
lucas- pps solve easy and hard maths problems, pps given answers from three other students
pps conformed more often when problems were harder
shows asch was correct in claiming task difficulty one variable affects conformity

lucas study conformity more complex than suggested
pps with high confidence maths abilities confromed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence
shows indivifual level factor influence conformity by interacting with situational variables
asch didnt research roles of individual factors