Social Influence L4 - Variables Affecting Conformity As Researched By Asch

Question 1

What 3 variables did Asch look at

Answer 1

• group size
• Unanimity of the majority
• task difficulty

Question 2

Group size

Answer 2

• Asch looked at the number of people in a group and whether this had an effect on the conformity rate
• He found that there was very little conformity if there were one two confederates in the majority (group of 3)
• a majority of three confederates, then conformity rates went to 30%
• after this further increase in the majority size did not affect conformity rates - showing that group size is important up to a point.
• Campbell and Fairey (1989), said that group size will have an effect depending on the type of judgement being made and the motivation of the individual
• if task is difficult then conformity rates may be effected
• If the task is ambiguous, then conformity is likely to happen following the majority
• If the task is clear, then conformity is likely to happen to ‘fit in’.

Question 3

Unanimity of the majority

Answer 3

• This means that when everyone in the group agreed with the same answer (regardless of whether this answer was right or wrong)
• If one confederate gave the correct answer, then conformity levels dropped significantly from 33% to 5.5%
• If one confederate gave the wrong answer and it was not the same as the majority, then conformity rates dropped to 9%
• suggests that you only needed one break in the unanimous decision for conformity rates to drop.

Question 4

Task difficulty

Answer 4

• measured whether the difficulty of the task given to the pps had an effect on whether they would conform or not
• In one variation, Asch made the differences between the line lengths much smaller (so that the ‘correct’ answer was less obvious)
• Under these circumstances, the level of conformity increased
• Lucas et al. (2006) investigated this relationship a little further
• They found that the influence of task difficulty is moderated by the self-efficacy of the individual. (the term self-efficacy refers to the idea that how competent confident a person feels in carrying out a task
• When exposed to maths problems in an Asch-type task, high self- efficacy participants, even under conditions of high task difficulty remained more independent than participants of low self-efficacy
• This shows that situational differences (task difficulty) and personality differences (self-efficacy) are both important in determining conformity

Question 5

Evaluation of Asch’s studies and variables affecting conformity (x4)

Answer 5

• Asch’s study may be a child of it’s time
• Artificial situation and task
• Limited application and findings
• Ethical issues

Question 6

Asch’s study may be a child of it’s time

Answer 6

• Asch’s study was carried out in 1950’s
• Perrin and Spencer (1980) repeated Asch’s original study on engineering students in the UK and found that only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials compared to Asch’s study where 75% of his sample conformed at least once.
• Thus Perrin and Spencer’s study shows that conformity does not always occur
• However, it could be that engineering students felt more confident about measuring lines that Asch’s original sample
• Or, it is also possible that the 1950s (when Asch did his study) was an especially conformist decade in the US thus it may be seen as the norm
• Nevertheless, society has changed greatly since the 1950s and it could be that people are in fact less conformist today
• This is a limitation of Asch’s research because it means that the Asch effect is not consistent across situations or time thus suggesting that being conformist is not an important feature of human behaviour
• Therefore Asch’s research lacked temporal validity

Question 7

Artificial situation and task

Answer 7

• there is no doubt that all the participants knew that they were in a study and may have thus shown demand characteristics (i.e. guessed the aim of the study and acted in a way to please the experimenter)
• Also, the task of identifying the correct line is a very ‘silly’ task - not something that we do every day thus it may not have made any difference to the participants if they conformed or not
• Furthermore, although the real participants were placed in a group, Fiske (2014), argues that ‘Asch’s groups were not very group’ since they do not resemble the groups that we are all part of in everyday life
• Both these points about the actual task given and the group of confederates opens Asch’s study to criticism because we cannot thus generalise the findings to everyday situation especially when in everyday situations conformity may be important especially when we interact with people and groups in a more direct manner - we could thus argue that Asch’s studied lacked ecological validity.

Question 8

Limited application of findings

Answer 8

• The participants in Asch’s study were all young men (students)
• research has suggested that women may be more conformist since they are concerned about social relationships - such as being accepted, than men are (Neto, 1995).
• Also, Bond and Smith (1996) point out that the men in Asch’s study were from the US which is seen as an individualistic culture where people are concerned about themselves rather than the group
• Interestingly, when Asch’s study was carried out in more collectivist cultures such as China - where the social group is more important than the individual, conformity rates were higher
  -This finding makes sense since ‘collectivist cultures’ are more oriented to group needs so conformity rates would be higher
• This therefore suggests that Asch’s findings are very limited because they can only be applied to US males and not women or other cultures
• We could thus argue that Asch’s research lacks ‘population validity’!

Question 9

Ethical issues

Answer 9

• Asch’s research was criticised heavily on ethical grounds
• The main ethical issue in Asch’s study was deception - for example, he used confederates in the group - the real participant was not aware that the group formation was confederates
• Also, he got the confederates to give wrong answers on 12/18 trials
• This deception could then lead to psychological harm for the real participant because they would be confused on why everybody in the group is giving a clearly wrong answer - this would lead them to become confused and possibly stressed
• could also question whether Asch then gave his participants fully informed consent
• Although Asch did debrief his participants, does this justify the deceit used in the experiment