Social Influence: Lesson 3 - Variables Affecting Conformity Flashcards
What is the Asch experiment? (Procedure)
An experiment which was carried out to study the variables affecting conformity
- Placed a naive participant in a group with several confederates
- Group were told to look at a standard line and then decide individually which one of the three test lines matched the standard line
- Responses were given out loud
- Confederates gave wrong response on 12 out of the 18 trials
- Naive participant was either last or second last to give their response so they heard all the other responses first
What are the findings from the Asch experiment?
- the chance of making a genuine error on the task was 1% but 33% of the responses given were in incorrect
- 75% of the participants conformed on at least one of the trials
- 5% conformed on every trial
- 25% did not conform on any trial
How does group size affect conformity?
Asch changed the group size
- Groups with 1 confederate = 3% conformity rate
- Groups with 2 confederates = 13% conformity rate
- Groups with 3 confederates = 32% conformity rate (little change with 4 confederates compared to 3)
: we can resist the influence of two people fairly easily but find it other to resist three
How does task difficulty affect conformity?
Asch made the test lines a similar length
- conformity increased when task difficulty increased, because informational social influence was starting to have an impact
This is because when we are uncertain we look to others for confirmation
How does unanimity affect conformity?
When the group had unanimity, conformity increased
When only one other person gave a different answer, conformity decreased
Asch found that the presence of just one confederate rescued conformity from 33% to 5%
Asch found that the presence of just one confederate rescued conformity from 33% to 9%
Evaluation point 1 (temporal validity) (-)
The study may not have temporal validity
Temporal validity- when a study reflects a time period
The study was conducted 70 years ago and it is possible that people are not as conformity as they were then now
Evaluation point 2 (ecological validity & mundane realism) (-)
The tasked matching line lengths given to the participants is artificial and unlikely to happen in real life.
It therefore lacks mundane realism and ecological validity
Evaluation point 3 (gender bias) (-)
Only contained ,ales and is therefore gender biased
Does not represent female behaviour (beta bias)
Also has cultural bias because all of the participants are white males and it is unrepresentative (however the study has since been repeats with different samples and cultures has been proven to be reliable)
Evaluation point 4 (volunteer sample) (-)
Used a volunteer sample
May not be reflective of the wider population
Evaluation point 5 (ethical issues) (-)
There are ethical issues with the study, including:
- deception (this however was necessary to prevent demand characteristics)
- lack of informed consent
- psychological harm(participants are in a stressful and embarrassing situation)
