social influence-conformity Flashcards
Asch’s line study aims
measure the extent that people conformed to the opinion of others, even when other’s answers were completely wrong
what were Asch’s findings?
- naive participants conformed 36.8% of the time
-high level of conformity when situation unambiguous
-individual differences 25% never gave wrong answer
-75% conformed at least once
variables investigated by Asch
-group size
-unanimity
-task difficulty
procedure for investigating group size Asch
varied no. of confederates in each group so group size between 2-16
findings of investigating group size Asch
-two confederates, conformity to wrong answer was 13.6% when three confederates conformity rose to 31.8%
-above three confederates conformity rate levelled off. more than three made little difference
what’s Asch’s explanation for the role of group size in obedience?
people very sensitive to opinion of others as one confederate enough to sway opinion
what’s the procedure for investigating unanimity (Asch)?
dissenting confederate who sometimes correct answer sometimes wrong but always disagreed with majority
findings for investigating unanimity Asch
-conformity reduced on average to less than a quarter of the level it was when majority was unanimous
-conformity reduced if dissenter gave right or wrong answer
what role does the dissenting peer play for role of unanimity (Asch)?
having a dissenter enable the naive participant to behave more independently
what’s the procedure for task difficulty (Asch)?
-line-judging task harder as stimulus line and comparison lines more similar in length
-difficult to see the differences between lines
findings for task difficulty Asch
conformity increased
explanation of obedience in task difficulty (Asch)?
-situation more ambiguous so more likely to look for guidance and to assume they are right and we are wrong
-ISI plays a greater role when task gets harder
ao3 asch task artificial
-p’s knew they were in a study, demand characteristics
-task was trivial so no reason not to conform
-Fike (2014) argued ‘Asch’s groups were not very groupy’ (not like real-life groups)
-findings do not generalise to everyday life
ao3 little application
-only American men were tested
-Neto (1995) suggested women might be more conformist possible bc more concerned about social relationships
-also US an individualist culture and studies in collectivist cultures (i.e. China) found higher conformity rates (Bond and Smith 1996)
-Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in some and people from some cultures.
ao3 empirical evidence
-Lucas et al. (2006) asked p’s to solve ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ maths problems
-p’s were given answers that (falsely) claimed to be from three other students
-p’s conformed more often when the problems were harder
-Asch was correct that task difficulty is one variable affecting conformity