Aschs Conformity Researche

• Asch's Study Process

  A study conducted by Solomon Asch in 1951 to demonstrate the power of social influence, where participants were asked to identify which line matched a reference line, while 8 confederates gave the same incorrect answer.

  To investigate how much people would conform to a false consensus when faced with a majority opinion.
• Asch Procedure

  1. Participants were given a task to identify which line (A, B, or C) matched a reference line in a set of three lines. Each participant (including the confederates) was asked in turn to say which of the three lines on the right was the same length as the line on the far left of the slide.
  2. Eight of the participants (confederates) were actually in on the experiment, and they were instructed to give the same incorrect answer.creating a false consensus.The process is repeated multiple times, with the wrong answer being given by the confederates in each trial.
• Asch Findings

  • 37% of participants conformed to the majority opinion at least once

  • 12% conformed every time

  • 25% of the participants did not conform on any of the trials.
• Asch Takeaways

  1. Social influence can overpower individual judgment

  2. Conformity can occur even when participants are aware of the majority's incorrect answer

  3.Asch concluded that people will conform to the majority even when the situation is unambiguous

  4.people conform due to NSI (fitting in with the group) and ISI (because they believe the group is better informed than they are)

  Participants either conform to the majority opinion and give the incorrect answer, resist the social influence and maintain their correct answer, or fail to respond or give an ambiguous answer.
• Asch Basic facts

  • baseline procedure: 123 American men in groups 5-7 confederates
  • Group size: 1 to 15 confederates , with 3 cinfederates , conformity was 32% but little significant increase after.
  • Unanimity : conformity rate dropped with dissenter
  • Task Difficulty: Stimulus and comparison lines more similar in length, comformity increased. ( ISI)
  • Participants are pressured to conform to the majority opinion by seeing the other participants give the same incorrect answer.
• Limtations

  • (demand charactersitics) : task and situation were aritificial. Participants knew they were participating in a researche study and may simply have gone along with what was expected
  • findings do not generalise to real world situations
• Strengths

  • high reliability : Asch used a standardised procedure, meaning it can be replicated
  • has support from other researchers example: Smith & Bond their investigation, has been used to identify cross-cultural differences in conformity giving validity to the ideas that conformity is liked to group cohesion ie Asch research.
• Asch's Variable : Unamity

  • unamity=The extent to which all the members of a group agree.
  • asch wondered if the presence of a non-comforming would affect the participants conformity.
  • To test the effect of unanimity Asch asked one of the confederates to give the correct answer (i.e. the non-conforming answer)
  • rate of conformity decreased to less 1/4
  • This finding shows that support from another person makes it easier to resist the pressure to conform to the majority
  • Disrupting group unanimity is therefore one way to reduce conformity
• Asch's Variable: Group size


  • Asch wanted to know whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group. To test this he varied the number of confederates from 1-15.
  • Asch found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity
  • conformity increased with group size but only up to a point.With three confederates conformity rose to 31.8% but the presence of more confederates made little difference - the conformity rate soon leveled off
  • suggesting how people are sensitive to the views of others
• Aschs variable: Task Difficulty 


  • Asch wanted to know wether making the task harder would affect conformity.
  • The task was made more difficult by minimising the difference between the length of the stimulus and the rest of the lines, it became more ambiguous.
  • This made it harder for participants to detect the difference between the lines
  • Conformity increased as naive participants thought the majority to be right and looked towards them for guidance (ISI)