Variables Affecting Conformity Flashcards
What three factors did Asch investigate in his variations?
Size of group, unanimity, and difficulty of task.
How did Asch change his procedure to investigate size of group?
The original study had seven confederates. He used the same procedure, but ranging from 1-16 confederates.
What results were found about size of group?
With one confederate, conformity was about 4%, and 14% with two. With three, this rose to 31.8%, and with more than three confederates, there was little difference to the rates of conformity.
How did Asch change his procedure to investigate unanimity?
Confederates did not agree on answers beforehand. There was a dissenter in the line up - another confederate who dissagreed with the others, sometimes being correct, sometimes being incorrect.
What results were found about unanimity?
When the dissenter was correct, conformity dropped to about 5%. When the dissenter gave a different incoreect answer to the other confederates, conformity was at 9%. Asch found that conformity does highly depend on unanimity.
How did Asch change his procedure to investigate difficulty of task?
Asch made the comparison lines closer in length.
What results were found about difficulty of task?
Conformity rates increased (the percentage was not recorded). Asch found that when tasks become more difficult and ambiguous, informational social influence may come into play.
Furman and Duke (1988) - Summary
Looked at how a lack of confidence in a task affects conformity. Participants were students majoring in either music, or another subject. They listened to two pieces of music and were asked to state their preference, individually, then with confederates, Music majors weren’t influenced, non-music majors’ answers were affected by the confederates’ answers.
Eagly and Carli (1981) - Summary
A meta-analysis to examine whether women are more conforming than men. Found that although women are more likely to conform, the difference was very small. The difference also appears most in group-pressure situations in public - women are more likely to be compliant, rather than internalise.
Perrin and Spencer (1980) - Summary
Replicated Asch’s experiment with engineering, maths, and chemistry students. Found that on only one out of 396 trials the participant conformed to the wrong answer. Researchers argue that Asch’s experiment is outdated, and cultural changes affect conformity.
Smith and Bond (1998) - Summary
Meta-analysis of studies from multiple countries. Found that the average conformity of collectivist countries was 37%, while individualist countries was 25%.
