Variables affecting conformity

• Group size 1?


  Asch did several variations of his original study. One of those variations looked at the effect of the size of the group. In general it was found that the larger the group, the higher the conformity rate. However, this only happened to a point. As can be seen from the graph below, the conformity rates plateau somewhat once there are three confederates and once the group contained seven participants the conformity rates peaked.
• Group size 2?

  He found that conformity was as low as 3.6% when there was only one confederate in the room (giving the obviously wrong answer). This grew to 13.6% when there were two confederates giving the wrong answer. It then peaked at 37.1% when there were seven confederates (giving the wrong answer).
• Group size 3?


  These results are thought to stem from the fact that it is much easier to disagree with one person in a one to one situation than it is to disagree with a large group (especially if they are unknown to you). It is thought that conformity does not rise with groups larger than seven as larger groups arouse more suspicion in that the participant starts to suspect that something strange is going on.
• Unanimity 1?

  In Asch's original study all of the confederates gave a unanimous wrong answer. In his variations Asch looked to see what effect it would have to give the participant an ally (who would give the correct answer when the rest of the confederates gave the wrong answer).
• Unanimity 2?


  He found that the presence of just one ally caused conformity to drop from an average of 32% to an average of 5.5%. In some variations Asch had the ally give the correct answer, in other variations he had them give an incorrect answer (but a different incorrect answer to the other confederates). He found that both situations led to decreased conformity. It didn't seem to be important as to whether the ally agreed with the participant or not, just that they disagreed with the majority group.
• Task difficulty 1?

  Asch purposely developed his paradigm to contain an unambiguous task (an easy task with an obvious right and wrong answer). Later research investigated the effect that task difficulty had on conformity levels.
• Task difficulty 2?


  In general, it has been found that harder tasks lead to increased conformity. Asch investigated this by making the task harder by making the length of the lines more similar. He found that this caused conformity rates to increase. This could be due to informational social influence, as participants genuinely might not know the correct answer or might legitimately start to doubt their own responses.