social influence -> conformity (Asch) Flashcards
What is conformity?
A change in a person’s opinions or behaviour as a result of a real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people
Who did research into the extent that people will conform to the opinion of others?
Solomon Asch (1951)
- ‘Asch’s baseline study’
What was the aim of Asch’s baseline study (1951)?
Asch wanted to investigate whether people would conform to the majority in situations where an answer was obvious
What was the procedure of Asch’s baseline study (1951)?
- 50 participants took part
- In each experiment there were groups of 8 to 10 college students who believed they were taking part in a vision test
- Only one was an actual, naive participant and others were confederates (actors) of the experimenters.
- The task was a line judgement experiment
- Initially, six control trials were conducted where confederates gave the correct answer. Then in 12 critical trials, confederates were instructed to give the same incorrect answers unanimously
What did Asch measure?
Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view
What were the results of Asch’s baseline study (1951)?
- Showed a significant degree of conformity
- About 75% of participants conforming at least once, 5% conforming every time and the overall conformity rate in critical trials being around 32%
What were the conclusions of Asch’s baseline study (1951)?
Research suggests people will conform due to normative social influence, they conform for social approval, avoiding rejection or being seen as an outcast
When did Asch extend his baseline study?
1955
What did Asch investigate in 1955?
The variables that might lead to an increase or decrease in conformity
What are the three variables that were investigated by Asch (1955)?
- Group size
- Unanimity
- Task difficulty
What was the procedure of Asch’s investigation (1955)?
- 123 pps were placed in a group with 5-8 confederates.
- Group shown series of cards with lines shown on them. Their task was to say which of the three lines matched the standard line.
- The three comparison lines always had one that was the same length as the standard line.
- Confederates were instructed to give the same incorrect answer on 12 out of the 18 trials (these were called clinical trials).
- The real pps answered last or second-to-last after hearing confederate response`
What did Asch find (1955)?
- Results showed pps gave the wrong answer on 36.8% of the critical trials (% of total trials where the real pps gave the wrong [conforming] response).
- 75% of pps conformed at least once.
- 25% of pps did not conform on any of the trials
What did Asch conclude about his 1955 study into variables?
- Study supports normative social influence (NSI) because pps conformed to avoid rejection and fit in with the group.
- Most pps admitted they conformed due to NSI.
- Conformity to majority is common but not inevitable.
What did Asch find about group size?
- Asch varied the number of confederates from 1-16
- Conformity significantly jumped from 3% for one confederate to 33% for three confederates
- Conformity rate remained steady, 31% for 16 confederates
What did Asch conclude about group size?
The presence of a small, unanimous group has a strong social pressure, but beyond a certain point, the group size does not proportionally increase this pressure
What did Asch find about unanimity?
A confederate broke the group’s unanimity by responding correctly. in this variation, the conformity dropped to 5.5%
What did Asch conclude about unanimity?
The presents of a dissenter provides social support
What did Asch find about task difficulty?
- Asch repeated the experiment with smaller differences between the line lengths, making the task more ambiguous
- In this more difficult condition, the rate of conformity increased
What did Asch conclude about task difficulty?
Asch argued this was due to participants being more uncertain about their judgements, making them more susceptible to informational social influence
Evaluation: Supporting evidence -> strength
- Jenness (1932) provides research support for the role of informative social influence
- Students were asked to guess the number of beans in a jar
- After being given the opportunity to discuss their estimates again, nearly all participants changed their original estimate to be closer to the group estimate
- Conclusion: pps changed their answers because they believed he group estimate was more likely to be right, than their own individual estimate = ISI
- This shows that internalisation of group beliefs will occur especially in unfamiliar, ambiguous situations
Evaluation: Population validity -> limitation
- Asch used a culturally biased sample of 50 male students from an American college
- Therefore, we cannot generalise the results to other populations for example female students
- We might expect men to be less conformist than women due to gender-related social norms and expectations
- the findings may not be confidently applied to women.
- As a result, Asch’s sample lacks population validity and further research is required to determine whether males and females conform differently
- Moreover, the US is an individualist culture and similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures such as China have found that conformity rates are higher
- This means that Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures
Evaluation: Artificial situation and task -> limitation
- Task and situation were artificial
- So Asch’s experiment has low levels of ecological validity
- Asch’s test of conformity, a line judgement task, is an artificial task, which does not reflect conformity in everyday life
- Participants knew they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with what was expected (demand characteristics)
- The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and therefore there was no reason not to conform
- Consequently, we are unable to generalise the results of Asch to other real life situations and therefore these results are limited in their application to everyday life
