Lesson 4 - Variables affecting Conformity Flashcards
What 3 variables did Asch identify?
Group Size
Unanimity of the majority
Task difficulty
What is Group Size and how did Asch test it?
Group size is how the amount of people in a group affects someone’s conformity rate.
He found that there was very little conformity if there were only one or two confederates in the majority.
If there was a majority of three confederates, conformity rates went to 30%.
However, any increase in group size after 3 had no notable impact.
What is Unanimity of the majority, and how did Asch test it?
This is when everyone else in the group agreed on the same answer.
If one confederate broke the majority and gave the correct answer, then conformity rates would drop from 33% to 5.5%. If one confederate gave the wrong answer, but was still not the same as the majority, then conformity dropped to 9%.
What is task difficulty, and how did Asch test this?
Task difficulty was meant to make the situation more ambiguous. Asch made the differences between the lines smaller, and then this increased the conformity level, as people may have been unsure about the answer.
Evaluation of Asch’s studies - Temporal Validity (Perrin and Spencer)
Perrin and Spencer repeated Asch’s original study in 1980 on UK engineering students. They found that only one student confirmed in 396 trials. Yet Asch found that 75% of his sample conformed at least once. However, this could be due to the fact that P+S used engineering students, who were more confident in their ability.
Evaluation of Asch’s studies - Lacks ecological Validity (Fiske)
The task of measuring lines is a ‘silly’ task. It is rarely done, and thus they may believe that the task does not matter, and just conform due to the unserious nature of the task.
Fiske argues that Asch’s groups were also not reflective of real life. The results cannot easily be generalised to females due to the study only being done on men, which is gender bias.
Evaluation of Asch’s studies - Ethical issues
Criticised heavily on ethical grounds. Asch’s study had large amounts of deception, due to the confederates. This deception could potentially lead to psychological harm for the participant, as they would be confused as to why everyone is giving a clearly wrong answer in the critical trials.
Evaluation of Asch’s studies - Gender Bias (Neto) + Cultural Bias (Bond and Smith)
The participants were all men. Neto claims that women are more conformist, as they are more concerned about social relationships.
Bond and Smith also point out that all of the men came from the US, which is an individualistic culture, this meant the study has not been done on collectivist cultures, where conformity rates would be higher.
