Variables Affecting Conformity Flashcards
What Key study explores variable affecting conformity?
Asch (1956)
How many and who were the participants?
123 male, US undergraduates
What was the procedure?
• Participants were seated around a table and asked to look at three lines of different lengths
• Took turns to call out which of the three lines they thought was the same length as the ‘standard line’
• The real participant would always answer second to last, along with the confederates
In how many of the trials were the confederates instructed to give the same incorrect answer?
12 out of 18
What was Asch interested in discovering?
Whether the ‘real’ participants would stick to what they believed to be right, or cave in to the pressure of the majority and go along with its decision
What did Asch do to confirm that the stimulus line were indeed unambiguous?
• Conducted a control condition without confederates with the participants
• Participants
What were the findings on average conformity rate in Asch’s
procedure?
• On the 12 critical trials, the average conformity rate was 33%
What did Asch discover about individual diferences in conformity rates?
• ¼ participants never conformed on any of the trials
• 50% conformed on six or more of the critical trials
• 1 in 20 participants conformed on all 12 critical trials
What did Asch discover when he interviewed participants afterwards?
The majority of participants who conformed had continued to privately believe their own judgements but changed their public behaviour, giving incorrect answers to fit in (Compliance)
What type of conformity does Asch’s study focus on?
Compliance
What are the 3 variables affecting conformity?
• Group size
• The unamity of the majority
• The dificulty of the task
How did group size affect conformity?
• Asch found that there was very little conformity when the majority consisted of just one or two confederates
• Under the pressure of three cobfederates, conformity rose to 30%
• Further increases did not increase conformity too much from 30%
- Indicates group size is important up to a point
What did Campbell and Fairey suggest about group size?
• Group size may have a different effect depending on the type of judgement being made
- When there is not an objectively correct answer then the individual could be more worried about ‘fitting in’ with a large majority
- When there is a correct response, the individual is more likely to be concerned about giving the correct response
What happened when the real participant was given the support of another participant or confederate?
Conformity levels dropped from 30% to just 5.5%
What happened when a confederate gave an answer different from both the confederates’ and participant’s?
Conformity rates dropped to 9%
How did Asch increase dificulty?
Making the differences between the lines much smaller so that the correct line was harder to distinguish
What happened when task dificulty increased?
Conformity increased
What did Lucas et al discover about task difficulty?
• It’s moderated by self-efficacy of the individual
• When exposed to math problems, high-efficacy participants (ones confident in their abilties) remained more independant than low-efficacy participants
-Even in the high task dificulty
What was the weakness with the confederates?
• It would have been dificult for them to act convincingly when giving the wrong answer, something that would be an issue for the validity of the study
• However Asch’s confederates were said to have acted convincingly, reinforcing the validity of his findings
What is important about cultural differences in conformity?
• The US conformity rate was 25%
• The collectivist cultures in Africa, Asia and South America it was 37%
• Could be due to conformity being seen as a ‘social glue’ that binds communities together in collectivist cultures
