Conformity to social roles Flashcards
Asch (1956)
studied conformity using ‘visual discrimination’ task in which a group of p’s had to say out loud which of three comparison lines matched a standard line.
Ash (1956) group size
Asch found the the smaller the group size the lower the conformity and when group size was bigger it increased.
Asch (1956) unamity
Asch also found that conformity decreased when the group’s unaminity was distrubed and one of them gave a correct rather than incorrect answer
How did Asch (1956) make the task more difficult?
By making the camprison and standard lines very similar, so that the correct answer was much less obvious.
Conformity increased the more difficult the task was.
How many p’s were confederates
All but one of the p’s were actually ‘confederates’ who were initally instructed to give unanimously incorrect answer on 2/3 of the the 18 trials.
What % of confederates that were unanmious occur>
Conformity occured 33% of the time. When ome confederate dissented, conformity dropped to 6%
What happened when the task was easy?
Normative social influence operates and p’s show compliance.
What happened when task was difficult?
When the task was more diffcult, conformity probably occurs because of informational social influence.
AO3
Asch’s confederates may have been uncoving and so p’s may not have believed their incorrect answers.
Mori and Arai (2010)
E: If confederates were not convinving, the validty of the study would be low.
E: Mori and Arai (2010) overcame this by giving each p’s glasses which altered what they saw, removing the need for confederates
L: Conformity level were similar to Asch’s findings, suggesting his confederates did act convingly and that his findings are valid.
Weakness of research in conformity is that studies have only used a limited range of majority sizes
Bond (2005).
E: Asch believed that majority of 3 was sufficient number for maximum influence.
E: Bond (2005) says that only Asch used a majority greater than 9, and most studies hve used a greater than 9, andmost studies have used a majority of between 2 and 4.
L: This suggests that we know very little about thr effect of a larger majority on conformity rtes given that most research has studied only the influence of relatively small majority.
2 Ethical issues of Asch’s study
Informed consent - Asch did not give them information on the the nature of the study and to know what they are getting themselves into and giving them the right to withdraw.
Deception - Ash’s study was that they were deceived as they were misled by him and withholding information about the true aims of the study
2 Ethical issues of Asch’s study
Informed consent - Asch did not give them information on the the nature of the study and to know what they are getting themselves into and giving them the right to withdraw.
Deception - Ash’s study was that they were deceived as they were misled by him and withholding information about the true aims of the study
