Social Influence - Variables affecting conformity (GREY)

Question 1

Describe Asch’s baseline procedure.

Answer 1

123 American male participants.
One naive participant in each trial, others were confederates.
Task was that there were two white cards, one had a standard line and the other had 3 lines of different lengths, and one was the same as the standard line. Participants had to say which line had the same length as the standard line.
Confederates purposely said the wrong answer before the participant said their answer.
Unambiguous task.

Question 2

What are the 3 variables affecting conformity in Asch’s research?

Answer 2

Group size - 3 confederates made conformity rise to 31.8%, any more makes little difference.
Unanimity - with a disagreeing confederate, conformity reduced to a quarter.
Task difficulty - task made more ambiguous makes participants more likely to look for other people’s answers and assume they are right.

Question 3

What were the results of Asch’s baseline study?

Answer 3

Naive participants agreed with the other’s incorrect answer 36.8% of the time.
25% never conformed.
75% conformed at least once.

Question 4

What are 3 criticisms of Asch’s research?

Answer 4

Lack of temporal validity - 1950s, more general fear of being different.
Artificial situation and task - demand characteristics, act differently with strangers rather than friends.
Not generalisable - only American men, women tend to conform more.