Variables Affecting Conformity

Question 1

Who conducted the study about variables affecting conformity?

Answer 1

Asch - 1956

Question 2

What was the procedure for Asch?

Answer 2

123 male US undergraduates were tested.

Participants were seated around a table and asked to look at three lines of different lengths.
They took turns to call out which of the 3 lines they thought was the same length as a standard line, with the real participant always answering second to last.

Although there was always a fairly obvious solution to this task, on 12 of the 18 trials (i.e. the critical trials) the confederates were instructed to give the same incorrect answer.

Question 3

What was Asch interested in?

Answer 3

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.

Question 4

What were the findings for Asch’s study?

Answer 4

On 12 of the critical trials, the average conformity rate was 33% - participants agreed with the incorrect response given by the other group, members on average, on 1/3 of the trials.

Individual differences - 1/4 of the pps never conformed on any of the critical trials, 1/2 conformed on 6 or more of the critical trials and 1/20 conformed on all 12 of them.

Without distraction of confederates giving wrong answer - Pps made mistakes about 1% of the time, although this could not explain the relatively high levels of conformity in the main study.

Question 5

Why did Asch do a conditions without confederates giving wrong answer?

Answer 5

To confirm that the stimulus lines were indeed unambiguous

Question 6

What did Asch find after interviews?

Answer 6

Interviewed participants afterwards, he discovered that the majority of participants who conformed had continued privately to trust their own perceptions and judgements, but changed their public behaviour giving incorrect answers to avoid disapproval from other group members (they showed compliance).

Question 7

What did Asch say the study was about?

Answer 7

He asked for student volunteers to take part in a visual discrimination task, although, unbeknown to these volunteers, all but one of the participants were really confederates (i.e. colleagues) of the investigator.

The real purpose of the study was to see how the lone ‘real’ participant would react to the behaviour of the confederates.

Question 8

What are the variables affecting conformity?

Answer 8

Group size
The unanimity of the majority
The difficulty of the task

Question 9

How did group size affect conformity?

Answer 9

Asch found that there was very little conformity when the majority consisted of just one or two confederates.

However, under the pressure of a majority of 3 confederates, the proportion of conforming responses jumped up to about 30%.

Further increases in the size 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 10

What did Campbell and Fairey (1989) suggest?

Answer 10

That group size may have a different effect depending on the type of judgment being made and the motivation of the individual.

Where there is no objectively correct answer (e.g. musical preferences) and the individual is concerned about ‘fitting in’, then the larger the majority the more likely they are to be swayed.

However, when there is a correct response and the individual is concerned about being correct, then the views of just one or two others will usually be sufficient.

Question 11

How does the unanimity of the majority affect conformity?

Answer 11

In Asch’s original study, the confederates unanimously gave the same wrong answer.
When the real pp was given the support of either another real pp or a confederate who had been instructed to give the right answers throughout, conformity levels dropped significantly, reducing the % of wrong answers from 33% to just 5.5%.

Question 12

How does task difficulty affect conformity?

Answer 12

In one variation, Asch made the differences between the line lengths much smaller (so that the ‘correct’ answer was less obvious and the task much more difficult).

Under these circumstances, the level of conformity increased.

Question 13

What did Lucas do? (Task difficulty)

Answer 13

2006 - investigated the relationship a little further.

They found that the influence of task difficulty is moderated by the self-efficacy of the individual.
When exposed to maths problems in an Asch type task, high self-efficacy participants remained more independent than low self-efficacy participants, even under conditions of high task difficulty.

This shows that situational differences (task difficulty) and individual differences (self-efficacy) are both important in determining conformity.

Question 14

What are the evaluative points?

Answer 14

Asch’s research may be a ‘child of its time’
Problems with determining the effect of group size
Independent behaviour rather than conformity
Unconvincing confederates?
Cultural differences in conformity

Question 15

What is meant by Asch’s research may be a ‘child of its time’?

Answer 15

It’s possible that Asch’s findings are unique because the research took place in a particular period of US history when conformity was high.

In 1956, the US was in the grip of McCarthyism, a strong anti-communist period when people were scared to against the majority and so more likely to conform.

Perrin and Spencer attempted to repeat Asch’s study in the UK in the 1980s.

Question 16

What did Perrin and Spencer do?

Answer 16

1980s - using students who were studying science and engineering.

In their initial study they obtained only one conforming response out of a total of 396 trials where a majority unanimously gave the same wrong answer.

In a subsequent study, they used youths on probation as participants and probation officers as the confederates.

This time they found similar levels of conformity to those found by Asch back in the 1950s. This confirmed that conformity is more likely if the perceived costs of not conforming are high (Perrin and Spencer, 1980), which would have been the case during the McCarthy era in the US.

Question 17

What is meant by problems with determining the effect of group size?

Answer 17

Bond (2005)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 3 was a sufficient number for maximal influence and therefore most subsequent studies using the Asch procedure have used 3 as the majority size.

Bond points out that no studies other than Asch have used a majority size greater than 9, and in other studies of conformity the range of majority sizes used is much narrower, typically between 2 and 4.

This suggests Bond, means we know very little about the effect of larger majority sizes on conformity levels.

Question 18

What is meant by independent behaviour rather than conformity?

Answer 18

Only about 1/3 of the trials where the majority unanimously gave the same wrong answer produced a conforming response.

In 2/3 of these trials the participants resolutely stuck to their original judgment despite being faced with an overwhelming majority expressing a totally different view.

Asch believed that rather than showing human beings to be overly conformist, his study demonstrated a commendable tendency for participants to stick to what they believed to be the correct judgement, i.e. to show independent behaviour.

Question 19

What is meant by unconvincing confederates?

Answer 19

A problem for the confederates in Asch’s study is that it would have been difficult for them to act convincingly when giving the wrong answer, something that would pose serious problems for the validity of the study.

However, Mori and Arai (2010) overcame the confederate problems by using a technique where participants wore glasses with special polarising filters.

Question 20

What did Mori and Arai do?

Answer 20

3 participants in each group wore identical glasses and a fourth wore a different set with a different filter.
This meant that each pp viewed the same stimuli but 1 saw them differently.

This has the effect of causing them to judge that a different (to the rest of the group) comparison line matched the standard line.

For females, the results closely matched those of the original Asch study, although not for the male participants.
This suggests that the confederates in the original study has acted convincingly.

Question 21

What is meant by cultural differences in conformity?

Answer 21

Research suggests that there are important cultural differences in conformity, and we might therefore expect different results dependent on the culture in which a study takes place.

Smith (2006) analysed the results of Asch-type studies across a number of different cultures.
The average conformity rate across the different cultures was 31.2%.
What was interesting was the average conformity rate for individualist cultures was about 25%, whereas for collectivist cultures in Africa, Asia and South America it was much higher at 37%.

Markus and Kitayama (1991) suggest that a higher level of conformity arises in collectivist cultures because it is viewed more favourably, as a form of ‘social glue’ that binds communities together.