Asch's research 1955

• Baseline procedure

  • 123 American men. Each in a group with confederates.
  • Asked to do a line task where they matched lines to 1 in a set of 3. The confederates gave wrong answers.
  • On average, participant's conformed to group 36.8% conforming about 1/3 of the time. 25% never conformed
• Variables investigated by Asch

  Group size, unanimity and task difficulty
• Group size - variables

  To test this Asch varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15. Asch found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity. Highest level of conformity reached at 3 confederates 31.8%.
• Unanimity - Variables

  Introduced confederate who disagreed with other confederates. In one variation, confederate gave the correct answer and other a diff3erent but wrong answer. Participants conformed less in presence of a dissenter as rate decreased to less than a quarter when majority was unanimous.
• Task difficulty - variables

  Increased difficulty of line judging task by making lines closer in height. Asch found that conformity increased. This is because the answer was more ambiguous.
• Weakness

  Opposing research to his original findings. Perrin and Spencer repeated with engineering students and only 1 conformed out of 396 trials. 1950s America was more conformist. Lacks temporal validity.
• Weakness

  limited application. white males from US in the sample. Other research shows women and collectivist cultures are more conformist. Lacks generalisability as there are gender and cultural differences
• Weakness

  Lacks mundane realism. artificial task with lines that would not occur in everyday life. lacks ecological validity.
• Weakness

  Ethical issues. deceived due to confederates. ethical guidelines were broken. However benefits outweigh the costs and deception is needed for research into conformity.