Social influence - conformity Flashcards
Aim of Asch’s experiment
To measure the extent that people conformed to the opinions of others, even in a situation when the others answers were clearly wrong
Findings of Asch’s experiment
Asch found that the naive participants conformed 36.8% of the time. This shows a high level of conformity when situation is unambiguous
Individual differences - 25% of the participants never gave a wrong ans
75% conformed at least once
Asch conducted further studies where he showed that certain variables lead to less or more conformity
3 variables investigated by Asch
Group size
Unanimity
Task difficulty
Variable 1 - Group size
Conformity rates increase as the size of the majority influence increased
Asch found with one real participant and one confederate, conformity was low at 3%, rising to 13% with two confederates and 32% with three confederates. Adding extra confederates (up to 15) had no further effect on the overall conformity rate
Explanation - people are very sensitive to the opinions of other people because just one confederate was enough to sway opinion
Variable 2 - Unanimity
To what degree the group members are in agreement with each other
Introduced a dissenting confederate - sometimes they gave the correct answer and sometimes a different wrong answer (but always disagreed with majority)
Findings - in the presence of a dissenter, conformity reduced on average to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous
Conformity reduced if dissenter gave right or wrong answer
Explanation - having a dissenter enabled the naive participant to behave more independently
Variable 3- Task difficulty
Conformity increases when task difficulty increases, as the right answer becomes less obvious (confidence in own judgement drops)
This means that individuals will look to others for guidance as to what the correct response is, suggesting that ISI is a dominant force
Asch increased task difficulty by making the comparison lines similar, so the correct answer was less obvious. He found participants were more likely to conform to the wrong answer
2 limitations of Asch’s experiment
Artificial stimuli
Findings have limited application
EVALUATION: Artificial tasks
P - A weakness of Asch’s research is that the task and situation were artificial
E - Participants knew they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with what was expected of them. The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and therefore there was really no reason not to conform
E - Also, according to Fiske, Asch’s groups were not very ‘groupy’ i.e they did not really resemble groups that we experience in everyday life
L - This means the findings do not generalise to real world situations, especially those where the consequences of conformity might be important
EVALUATION: Findings have limited application
P - A limitations of Asch’s research is his sample of 123 male students from colleges in America
E - Other research suggests that women might be more conformist possibly because they are more concerned about social relationships than men (Neto)
E - Furthermore Asch’s study was conducted in the United States, an individualist culture, where people are more concerned about themselves rather than their social group. Studies done in collectivist cultures, where the social group is more important than the individual have found that conformity rates are higher (Bond and Smith)
L - This shows that Asch’s research lacks validity his findings tell us very little about conformity in anybody accept American males
2 strengths of Asch’s experiment
Research support
Reliability
EVALUATION: Research support
P - One strength of Asch’s research is that is has supporting evidence
E - For example Lucas et al asked students to give answers to mathematical problems that were easy or difficult. Students were more likely to give the wrong answer when the questions were difficult rather than when they were easy ones. This was especially true for students who rated their mathematics ability as poor
E - This is a strength because it supports Asch’s findings by providing further evidence
L - This therefore increases the validity of Asch’s research
EVALUATION: Reliability
His procedure was controlled - standardised instructions, same behaviour from the confederates and researchers, unambiguous task means that they aren’t accidentally testing something else.
It could easily be replicated in the same way today.
The research took place in a lab under controlled conditions, with the observer (Asch) being a participant, meaning that he got to see the results first-hand.
