SI - Variables affecting conformity Flashcards
Who was the psychologist that studied social influence on conformity?
Asch (1956)
Describe the procedure of Asch study of conformity:
123 male participants tested.
They were seated around a table and asked to look at three lines of different lengths. They took turns to call out which of the three lines they thought was the same length as a ‘standard line’ with the real participant always answering second to last.
Although there was always a fairly obvious solution to this task, on the 12 of the 18 trials, (the ‘critical’ trials) the confederates were instructed to give the same incorrect answer.
What was Asch interested in when completing the procedure of his study investigating conformity?
Whether the ‘real’ participants would stick to what they believed to be right, or cave in to the pressure of the majority and go along with its decision.
What were the findings of Asch’s study of conformity?
On the 12 critical trials the conformity rate was 1/3 - the participants agreed with the incorrect response given by the other group members 1/3 of the time.
1/4 of the participants never conformed on any of the critical trials.
3/4 conformed on at least one of the critical trials.
1/2 conformed on six or more of the critical trials.
1 in 20 of the participants conformed on all 12 of the critical trials.
What did Asch do to confirm that the stimulus lines were indeed unambiguous in his study?
Conducted a control condition without the distraction of confederates giving wrong answers.
What did Asch find in his control condition of his study?
That participants made mistakes about 1% of the time, (although this could not explain the relatively high levels of conformity in the main study).
What did Asch discover when he interviewed his participants after the study?
That the majority of participants who conformed had continued privately to trust their own perceptions and judgements, but changed their public behaviour, giving incorrect answers to avoid disapproval from other group members (they showed compliance).
What did the majority of participants in Asch’s study show?
Compliance.
Who did Asch involve in his study and what did he tell them?
What was the real purpose of his study?
He asked student volunteers to take part in a visual discrimination task, although, unbeknown to these volunteers, all but one of the participants were really confederates of the investigator.
The real purpose of the study was to see how the lone ‘real’ participant would react to the behaviour of the confederates.
What did Asch do after completing his study of conformity?
Carried out a number of variations of his original study to find out which variables had the most significant effects on the level of conformity shown by participants.
Why did Asch carry out variations of his original study of conformity?
To find out which variables had the most significant effects on the level of conformity shown by participants.
What variables did Asch use in his variations of his original study of conformity?
Group size, the unanimity of the majority, the difficulty of the task.
How did group size affect Asch’s findings in his study of conformity?
- Very little conformity when the majority consisted of just 1 or 2 confederates.
- Under the pressure of 3 confederates, the proportion of conforming responses increased up to 30%.
- Further increase of majority size didn’t increase the level of conformity substantially.
Therefore, the size of the majority is important but only up to a point.
What did Campbell and Fairey (1989) discover about group size relating to Asch’s earlier experiment?
Group size may have a different effect depending on the type of judgement being made and the motivation of the individual.
Where there is no objectively correct answer (e.g. musical preferences) and the individual is concerned about ‘fitting in’, then the larger the majority the more likely they are to be swayed. However, when there is a correct response and the individual is concerned about being correct, then the views of just one or two others will usually be sufficient.
How did the unanimity of the majority affect Asch’s findings in his study of conformity?
In his original study the confederates unanimously gave the same wrong answer.
When the real participant was given the support of either another real participant or a confederate who had been instructed to give the right answers throughout, conformity levels dropped significantly, reducing the % of wrong answers from 1/3 to just 5.5%.
When the lone ‘dissenter’ gave an answer that was both different from the majority and different from the true answer, conformity rates dropped to 9%, nearly as great a fall as when the dissenter provided support for the real participant by giving the same answer.
This lead Asch to conclude that it was breaking the group’s unanimous position that was the major factor in conformity reduction.
