Variables affecting conformity - Asch

Question 1

what variables affect conformity?

Answer 1

group size, unamity and task difficulty

Question 2

Who conducted several experiments in the 1950s to determine how people are affected by the thoughts and behaviours of other people?

Answer 2

Asch

Question 3

what was the aim of aschs experiment?

Answer 3

Asch (1951) conducted an experiment looking at normative social influence. He wanted to see if people would conform to a group’s wrong answer even if the answer was unambiguous. The Asch effect is the influence of the group’s majority view on an individual’s judgment.

Question 4

what was achs procedure?

Answer 4

individual participants were seated around a table with Confederates and asked to judge lines of different lengths and match one of these to a standard line
- on 12 out of 18 trials confederates were instructed to give the same wrong answer. Asch wanted to know if participants would conform with the majority

Question 5

how many participants conformed to group pressure at least oneby choosing the incorrect line because of the groups views

Answer 5

75%

Question 6

what 4 factors influence conformity ?

Answer 6

• size of the majority: the greater the majority the more likely to conform however it is too a limit (up to 7 in aschs study)
• non comformists: if there is at least one dissenter, conformity rates dropped to near 0
• the public or private nature of responses: when responses are made publicly , conformity is more likely however when publicly conformity was less likley
• task difficulty: the harder the lines were to distinguish in length, the conformity increased

Question 7

what are the cons of Aschs study

Answer 7

• artifical situation- this means the experiment has low ecological validity (and cannot be generalised to real life situations)
• deception -real participants didnt know the other participants were confederates
• limited application of findings- only men are tested by Asch. Other research shows women may be more conformist possibly because they cared about social relationships and being liked
• demand characteristics- knew aim

Question 8

what are pros of Aschs study

Answer 8

the laboratory meant variables were strictly controlled:

• the experiment could be repeated easily
• the influence of extraneous variables ( those not being studied ) could be minimised

Question 9

In aschs Line judgement task what happened when the dissenter answered correctly from the start of the study

Answer 9

Conformity levels dropped from 32% to 5.5%

Question 10

What happened if in aschs line judgement task the dissenter answered correctly later in the study

Answer 10

Conformity levels dropped to 8.5%.this shows that social support received earlier is more effective than support received later

Question 11

In aschs study how much of the time did the naive participant give a wrong answer

Answer 11

36.8%

Question 12

Overall how many participants didn’t conform to any of the trials
In aschs study

Answer 12

25% which meant 75% conformed at least once

Question 13

Aschs variations summary

Answer 13

• conformity increased up to group size of 4
• dissenter reduce conformity
• conformity increased when task was harder