Social Influence - Asch's Research Flashcards
What is group size in the context of conformity?
Asch increased the size of the group by adding more confederates, thus increasing the size of the majority. Conformity increased with group size, but only up to a point, levelling off when the majority was greater than three.
What is unanimity in the context of conformity?
The extent to which all the members of a group agree. In Asch’s studies, the majority was unanimous when all the confederates selected the same comparison line. This produced the greatest degree of conformity in the naive participants.
What is task difficulty in Asch’s research?
Asch’s line-judging task is more difficult when it becomes harder to work out the correct answer. Conformity increases because naive participants assume that the majority is more likely to be right.
What was the procedure of Asch’s conformity experiment?
Asch tested conformity by showing participants two large white cards at a time. One card had a ‘standard line’ and the other had three ‘comparison lines.’ One of the three lines was the same length as the standard, and the other two were substantially different. The participant was asked which of the three lines matched the standard. The participant was tested with a group of 6-8 confederates who gave the same wrong answer on 12 out of 18 trials, called ‘critical trials.’
What were the main findings of Asch’s research?
The naive participant gave a wrong answer 36.8% of the time. Overall, 25% of the participants did not conform on any trials, meaning that 75% conformed at least once. The term ‘Asch effect’ has been used to describe this result: the extent to which participants conform even in an unambiguous situation. When interviewed afterwards, most participants said they conformed to avoid rejection (normative social influence).
What were Asch’s variations in the study?
Asch’s variations included three conditions:
Group size: Conformity increased with group size, up to a majority of three. Beyond that, conformity levels off.
Unanimity: The presence of a dissenter reduced conformity by 25%.
Task difficulty: Making the lines more similar in length increased conformity, as the task became harder.**
What is one evaluation point for Asch’s research?
Perrin and Spencer (1980) repeated Asch’s original study with engineering students in the UK. Only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials. This suggests that Asch’s effect is not consistent across situations and may not be consistent across time.
What is one evaluation point regarding limited application of findings?
Asch only tested men. Other research suggests that women might be more conformist, possibly because they are more concerned about social relationships than men (Neto 1995). The men in Asch’s study were from the United States, an individualist culture, and similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures such as China found that conformity rates are higher. This makes Asch’s findings limited in application to other cultures.
What is one evaluation point about artificial situations in Asch’s research?
The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial, and therefore there was really no reason to conform. Also, although the naive participants were members of a ‘group,’ it didn’t really resemble groups that we are part of in everyday life. According to Fiske (2014), ‘Asch’s groups were not very groupy.’ This means the findings do not generalise well to everyday situations.
What is another limitation of Asch’s findings?
Bond and Smith (1996) point out that conformity rates are sometimes even higher than Asch found. This suggests Asch’s findings may only apply to certain situations and populations.
