Asch and Factors affecting conformity

• AIM

  the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person conforming
• Procedure

  Asch used a line judgement task, where he placed one real naïve participants in a room with seven confederates (actors), who had agreed their answers in advance. The real participant was deceived and was led to believe that the other seven people were also real participants. The real participant always sat second to last.
• Factors that affect conformity:

  group size, unanimity, task diffculty
• Group size:

  the number of people in the social group exerting the pressure or perceived pressure on the individual to conform
• Unanimity

  the extent to which they agree with each other. The extent to which the group of people exerting the pressure or perceived pressure on the individual to conform agree with one another or are demonstrating consistent behaviour
• Task difficulty


  how challenging the situation/task is for the individual who is experiencing the pressure/perceived pressure to conform
• Asch's conditions (group size):

  Group size: the number of ppl that cause you to conform (usually bigger groups)

  
  

  What Did Asch Find : Asch varied the number of confederates - the bigger the group size, the more likely we are to conform, Asch found that conformity was more likely if at least up to 3 confederates said the same answer

  
  

  What Conclusions Can We Draw: the bigger the group the more likely we are to conform. However, once the group size reaches 3 it seems to reach maximum level of influence
• Asch's conditions (unanimity):

  Unanimity: if everyone has the same answer/idea/opinion

  
  

  What Did Asch Find : when the confederates were unanimous the conformity levels from Ps were higher

  
  

  What Conclusions Can We Draw : if everyone has the same answer, the more likely we are to conform (if there is a unanimous rate)
• Asch's conditions (task difficulty):

  Task difficulty: how difficult the 'situation/task' is and if there is an obvious way to respond (unambiguous) but if there Is not an obvious way to respond (ambiguous)

  
  

  What Did Asch Find: increased task difficulty increased conformity levels

  
  

  What Conclusions Can We Draw: of the task is genuinely difficult and we don't know the answer the more likely we are to conform to not stand out
• Weakness - Lacks ecological validity

  P- one weakness of Asch's study is that it lacks mundane realism so ultimately also lacks ecological validity

  E- as a trivial and artificial task is not reflective of real-life examples of conformity

  E- e.g., wearing similar clothes to fit in with your friendship group.

  L- This means that the results are difficult to generalise to real-life demonstrations of conformity
• Weakness - Lacks temporal validity

  P- one weakness of Asch's study is that it may lack temporal validity

  E- as it was carried out in the 1950s during the period when McCarthyism was prominent

  E- also over time society has changed and there may have been higher conformity levels back then due to society

  L- this means that it may not be applicable to examples of modern day conformity such as when we conform in class because we do not know the answer
• Weakness - may not be generalisable to women


  P- one weakness of Asch's study is that it may not be generalisable to women

  E- this is because the study was carried out solely using male participants (university undergraduates) , this creates a gender-bias

  E- however, it may have been done to reduce participant variables

  L- despite this, this means that the results are unable to be generalised to examples of conformity in women E.g, Neto found that women are more conformist than men because they are more concerned about social relationships.
• Weakness - may not be generalisable to other cultures (collectivist)


  P- one weakness of Asch's study is that it may not be generalisable to other cultures e.g., collectivist cultures. E- this is because the study was carried out using solely male participants (a biased sample) from an individualistic culture E- and on the other hand, members from a collectivist culture would be more likely to conform with each other L- this means that the study is culture-bound to western individualistic cultures as it cannot be applied to all cultures
• Strength of Asch's study

  P-A strength of Asch's study into conformity is that it was carried out in a lab setting and was carefully controlled.

  E-This means that there was good control over situational variables,

  E-therefore any change in results was due to the change in the independent variable and its effect on the dependent variable. L-The results show a direct cause and effect link and so are ,therefore, reliable.
• Weakness - ethical issues

  P- one weakness of Asch's study is that is has ethical issues

  E- this is because it does not comply with the BPS Guidelines of Deception- this is because the Ps were deceived that all the other confederates were also true Ps and also deceived them about the true aims of the study by saying it was a 'vison test'

  E- However, this is arguable justifiable as it was necessary to deceive the participants in order to test conformity

  L- and maintain the validity of the study by not inducing demand characteristics e.g., 'please-u'/ 'screw-u' effect
• Ps were told that they were taking part in a vision test
• The experiment had a control condition in order to ensure that the average person could accurately g auge the length of the line. Ps were accurate in choo sing the correct answer 99% of the time