SOCIAL INFLUENCE - Asch (1951) Conformity Experiment

Question 1

What was the aim of the Asch (1951) Conformity Experiment?

Answer 1

To investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.

Question 2

What was the procedure for Asch’s study?

Answer 2

• Only one real naïve participant was put in a room with up to 8 other confederates (the participant did not know the other people in the group were confederates)
• Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line was most like the reference line and the answer was always obvious
• The real participant always gave their answer last or second last
• 18 of these trials were held in total, 12 of which confederates agreed on giving the wrong answer
• A control experiment with a group of only participants and no confederates was also held

Question 3

What were the results of the Asch (1951) Conformity Experiment?

Answer 3

• The chance of making a genuine mistake was 1%
• Within the 12 critical trials, 35% of participants conformed with the obvious incorrect group majority
• 75% of participants conformed at least once
• 25% of participants never conformed at all
• The control group with no confederates felt no pressure to conform given the simplicity of the line judgement task

Question 4

What conclusion was made about the Asch (1951) Conformity Experiment?

Answer 4

Upon interviewing participants after the experiment, they confessed that they knew that answers when conforming were incorrect but went along with the group anyway in order to fit in (normative social influence)

Question 5

How many participants were involved in this study?

Answer 5

123 male US undergraduates

Question 6

What 3 factors did Asch change in future studies?

Answer 6

• Group size
• Task difficulty
• Unanimity

Question 7

How did group size affect the results?

Answer 7

• Groups with one confederate had a conformity rate of 3%
• 13% with 2 confederates
• 32% with 3 confederates
• Concludes that three people or more are much harder to resist

Question 8

How did task difficulty affect results?

Answer 8

• Asch adjusted the study so that they lines were of similar lengths, making the judgment more difficult
• Conformity then increased
• Concludes the more difficult the task the more informational social influence there would have been

Question 9

How did unanimity affect results?

Answer 9

• When the majority were unanimous (in agreement) in their wrong answer, conformity levels increased
• The presence of just one confederate who went against the majority reduced conformity from 37% to 5%
• Unanimity means normative social influence is stronger

Question 10

What are some limitations of Asch’s conformity study?

Answer 10

• It lacks temporal validity. The study was conducted 80 years ago and it is possible that people have been more conformist than they are now. It might not reflect the current time period and is irrelevant
• The task given to participants (line length matching) is artificial many unlikely to occur IRL. The study lacks ecological validity as conformity usually takes place in a social context with people we already know
• The study is gender and culturally biased. The sample only contained male white Americans that cannot be generalised