Research into conformity Flashcards
Who did research into conformity?
Asch (1951)
What did Asch aim to test?
Whether people would conform to group pressure, even if that meant giving a clearly wrong answer in a straightforward (unambiguous) line judgement task.
When did Asch conduct his study?
1951
How many participants did Asch use?
123 American male undergrads
What were the participants shown?
A series of lines; the standard line and 3 comparison lines, one of which was the same length as the standard line.
How many males were tested at a time?
7 males
Out of the 7 males in each test, how many were confederates?
6/7 males were confederates. There was only 1 true participant.
On how many trials did Asch instruct the confederates to give a wrong answer?
12 out of 18
What did Asch call the trials where the wrong answer was purposely said by the confederates?
Critical trials
Where was the true participant sat in the study?
Second to last within the row
What was the mean conformity rate?
37%
What percentage conformed on every critical trial?
5%
What percentage of participants did not conform to any of the critical trials?
25%
What did Asch find in a control group of participants who were tested individually?
They gave incorrect answers in 1% of the trials.
How did Asch explain his findings?
That the participants would agree with the majority (say the wrong answer purposely with the majority) to avoid standing out from the crowd
What did Asch conclude?
Participants were showing compliance.
What are the 3 variables that Asch used to further investigate the effects on conformity?
- Unanimity
- Group size
- Task difficulty
What is unanimity?
The extent to which all members of a group agree.
When is the pressure to conform the highest?
When the majority group are unanimous
When testing unanimity, what did he provide the real participant with?
A dissenter (non-conformist ally)
What did the dissenter do in the experiment?
The dissenter proved either the correct answer or a different incorrect answer.
What did Asch find when a dissenter was present?
The conformity rate dropped from 37% to 25%
What did Asch conclude about unanimity?
That when a groups unanimity is broken, it Is a major variable in reducing conformity.
When were the conformity rates lowest regarding group size?
When there were only 1 or 2 confederates.
At what size did the conformity rates increase?
3 confederates, the conformity rates increased to 32%
What happened with further size increases?
Didn’t increase the conformity rate
When is a person more likely to conform, when a task is more or less difficult?
More difficult
Why do more people conform when there is a difficult task?
They are less confident in their own opinion.
What did Asch do to test the task difficulty?
He made the standard line and the comparison lines more similar, conformity rates increased.
What are the evaluation points?
\+ Well controlled - Perrin and Spencer 1981 \+ Easy to replicate - Low ecological validity - High demand characteristics - Deception
Strength of Asch’s conformity research: the study was well controlled
E: controlled setting of a lab made it easy to control extraneous variables
E: control the lighting and lines used to ensure participants could easily judge the length of the lines
L: study measured what it intending to measure, giving it high internal validity
Evidence against comes from Perrin and Spencer (1981)
E: When repeating Asch’s study in Britain, only 1 person conformed out of 396 trials.
E: People don’t always conform as much as Asch’s original study suggested
L: lacks temporal validity
Strength of Asch’s conformity research: study was easy to replicate
ORIGINAL STUDY ONLY
E: controlled setting of a lab made it easier to replicate the study in exactly the same way, adjusting variables each time to test their influence on conformity.
E: Asch was able to keep everything the same (standardised), but change variables such as the size of the ground difficulty of the task.
L: +ve allowed Asch’s research to test which variables affect conformity the most to gain a better understanding.
Weakness of Asch’s research into conformity: Low ecological validity
E: viewed as an artificial setting because it doesn’t represent real-life.
E: In real-life people would usually be able to question why the others were giving incorrect answers in real-life situations but Asch didn’t allow his participants to do this.
L: -ve may not generalise to real life conformity settings and situations
Weakness of Asch’s research into conformity: high demand characteristics
E: participants were aware they were taking part in a study, they may have behaved unnaturally
E: they may have tried to please Asch by behaving in a way they thought they were intended to by conforming
L: lower the internal validity
Weakness of Asch’s research into conformity: deception
E: critiqued for deliberately deceived participants
E: participants were told that all of the people sat around the table were participants but they were confederates which resulted in many participants reporting feeling embarrassed and foolish after the experiments
L: goes against the ethical code of conduct.
What is not possible due to deception?
Full informed consent until afterwards in the debrief.
What does Asch argue about using deception?
He wouldn’t have been able to obtain realistic results if he had not used deception.
