Variables affecting conformity

Question 1

What is unanimity?

Answer 1

• In Asch’s original study, the confederates unanimously gave the same wrong answer.
• When the real participant was given the support of either another real participant or a confederate who had been instructed to give the right answers throughout, conformity levels dropped significantly, reducing the percentage of wrong answers from 37% to just 5%.
• When the lone ‘dissenter’ gave an answer that was both different from the majority and different from the true answer, conformity rates dropped to 9%, nearly as great a fall as when the dissenter provided support for the real participant by giving the same answer.

= This led Asch to conclude that it was breaking the group’s unanimous position that was the major factor in conformity reduction.

Question 2

Describe Difficulty of a Task:

Answer 2

• If the task is difficult or the participant isn’t quite so sure what to do, then conformity is more likely
• However, if the task is familiar and/or easier, conformity is less likely.
• Asch tested this by using three lines differing less in length than in his original experiments. As predicted, participants exhibited more conformity when the line task was more difficult.

Question 3

Describe Group Size:

Answer 3

• Asch changed the size of the group of confederates, using 1,2,3,4,8,10 and 15 in a group.
• He found that conformity was very low with only one confederate. - - When there were 3 confederates conformity climbed to 33% but after this group size didn’t much matter.
• Increases above 3 of the majority did not increase this level of conformity substantially, indicating that the size of the majority is important but only up to a point.

Question 4

A03 Unanimity - Allen and Levine

Answer 4

• Allen and Levine refined our understanding and showed that conformity depends on the characteristics of the supporter rather than on just their presence:
• In one condition, the confederate providing the support wore glasses with very thick lenses. Therefore, he provided invalid social support, given that this was a test of visual discrimination.
• In the second, the supporter had normal vision, i.e. he provided valid social support.
• Both conditions reduced the amount of conformity, but the valid social supporter had much more impact, showing that an ally is helpful in resisting conformity, but more so if they are perceived as offering valid social support.

Question 5

A03 Difficulty of a Task - Perrin and Spencer + Lucas et al

Answer 5

• Perrin and Spencer found that engineers did not conform as readily as participants in Asch’s study.
• This is likely due to their increased experience with spatial tasks. -

-Also, Lucas et al had students answer easy and hard problems in mathematics.
-There was more conformity with hard problems. This was especially the case with students who doubted their mathematical ability. Hence, the difficulty of a task does seem to influence levels of conformity.

Question 6

A03 Group Size - Bond

Answer 6

• Bond suggests a limitation of research in conformity is that studies have used only a limited range of majority sizes.
• Investigators were quick to accept Asch’s conclusion that a majority size of three was a sufficient number for maximal influence and therefore most subsequent studies using the Asch procedure have used maximum majorities of three.
• This suggests that we have little understanding about the effect of larger majority sizes on levels of conformity.