asch

• Solomon Asch (1951)


  devised a procedure to study what extent people will conform to the opinion of others.

  this is considered a baseline procedure = the study to which later studies are compared to.
• variables investigated by asch

  1. group size
  2. unanimity
  3. task difficulty
• group size

  Asch wanted to see if the number of confederates would impact the results of the study.

  He conducted the study with half the number of confederates and then compared it with 3 or more confederates.

  findings : <2 confederates = limited conformity

  3 > confederates = 30% conformity - BUT larger grp didn't increase conformity rates
• unanimity of majority

  the dissenter gave the right answer against the majority = reduced rates from 37% to 5.5%.

  dissenter gave a different answer to the confederates but not the right answer = conformity dropped 9%.
• difficulty of the task


  line lengths became much smaller and harder to tell the difference between.

  conformity increased as self efficiency decreased.
• limitations of Asch's study


  1. the task and situation were artificial (couldn't be generalised to real-life situations as ppts knew they were in a study and may have gone along with what was expected)
  2. ppts were all American men (Asch's study tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures)
• research support


  1. support from other studies for effects of task difficulty
  2. todd lucas et al - asked ppts to solve 'easy' and 'hard' maths problems
  3. ppts given answers from 3 other students (not real)
  4. ppts conformed more often when the problems were harder
• research support

  shows asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity