Asch's study:

• What was Asch's research study?

  Solomon Asch devised a procedure to asses to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others, even in a situation where the answer is certain.
• Asch's baseline procedure:

  • 123 men were tested, each one in a group with other apparent participants
  • Each participant saw two large white cards on each trial
  • The line X on the left-hand card is the standard line
  • The lines A, B and C are the three comparison lines
  • One of the three comparison lines is always clearly the same length as X, the other two are substantially different
  • On each trial the participants had to say (out loud) which of the comparison lines was the same length as the standard line X.
• Asch'c baseline procedure continued:

  • The participants were tested in groups of 6 to 8
  • One was a naive participant, always seated either last or next to last in the group
  • The others were all confederates of Asch- that is, they all gave the same (incorrect) scripted answers each time
  • The genuine participant did not know the others were confederates
• What were Asch's baseline findings?

  • On average the genuine participants agreed with the confederates incorrect answers 36.8% of the time (yielded to the social pressures)
  • There were individual differences, 25% of the participants never gave a wrong answer (confident enough to not conform)
• Variables investigated by Asch:

  • G-group size
  • U- unanimity
  • T- task difficulty
• group size:

  • varied the number of confederates from one to 15
  • curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate
  • Conformity increased with group size, but only up to a point
  • with three confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%. But the presence of more confederates made little difference- the conformity rate soon levelled off
  • this suggests that most people are very sensitive to the views of others because just one or two confederates was enough to sway opinion
• Task Difficulty:

  • Asch increased the difficulty of the line-judging task by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar to each other in length
  • Asch found that conformity increased
  • It may be that the situation is more ambiguous when the task becomes harder- it is unclear to the participants what the right answer is
  • In these circumstances, it is natural to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and you are wrong
• Unanimity:

  • Asch introduced a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates
  • In one variation of the study this person gave the correct answer and in another variation he gave a (different) wrong one
  • The genuine participant conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter
  • The rate decreased to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous
  • This suggests that the influence of the majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous
  • And that non-conformity is more likely when cracks are perceived in the majority's unanimous view