Asch's Conformity Study

• Define conformity


  A change in a person's behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.
• How did Asch change the group size?


  Asch increased the size of the group by adding more confederates, thus increasing the size of the majority. Conformity increased with group size, but only up to a point, levelling off when the majority was greater than three.
• Define unanimity


  The extent to which all the members of a group agree.
• What effect did the majority being unanimous have in Asch's line-judging task?


  Produced the greatest degree of conformity in the naïve participants.
• What effect did the difficulty of the line judging-task have on conformity? Why?


  Conformity increased because naïve participants assume that the majority is more likely to be right.
• What was the aim of Asch's conformity experiment?


  To investigate the effects of conformity when naïve participants were placed with confederates who elicited incorrect answers to a line perception test.
• What was Asch's baseline procedure for his conformity experiment?


  123 American males.

  Placed in groups of 7 or 9

  Experimenter showed them two cards

  The cards showed a standard line with three comparison lines

  Had to call out responses

  Confederates answered incorrectly for 12 trials out of 18
• What were the three variables investigated by Asch?


  Group size, unanimity, and task difficulty.
• How did Asch investigate the effect of group size of conformity in his line-judging experiment?


  He varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15 (so the total group size was from 2 to 16).
• What results did Asch find in terms of the relationship between group size and conformity rate? What does these results suggest?

  He found a curvilinear relationship between the two. Conformity increased with group size. With 3 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8% but the conformity rate soon levelled off as the presence of more confederates made little difference.

  
  

  Most people are very sensitive to the views of others because just one or two confederates was enough to sway opinion.
• How did Asch investigate the effect of unanimity on conformity in his line-judging experiment?


  He introduced a confederate candidate who disagreed with the other confederates. This confederate is called a dissenter.
• What results did Asch find in terms of the relationship between unanimity and conformity rate? What does these results suggest?


  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. The presence of a dissenter appeared to free the naïve participant to behave more independently, even when the dissenter disagreed with the genuine participant.

  
  

  The influence of the majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous. Also, non-conformity is more likely when cracks are perceived in the majority's unanimous view.
• How did Asch investigate the effect of task difficulty on conformity in his line-judging experiment?


  He increased the difficulty of the line-judging task by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar to each other in length. This made it harder for the genuine participants to see the difference between the lines.
• What results did Asch find in terms of the relationship between task difficulty and conformity rate? Why?


  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 (this is Information Social Influence (ISI)).
• Evaluation: Outline one limitation of Asch's research


  One limitation of Asch's research is that the task and situation are artificial.

  Participants knew they were in a research study and may have simply behaved in the way they thought was expected (demand characteristics).

  The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and therefore there was really no reason not to conform.

  Also, the groups did not resemble groups that we experience in everyday life.

  This means that the findings do not generalise to real-world situations, especially those where the consequences of conformity might be important.
• Evaluation: Outline one limitation of Asch's research


  One limitation of Asch's research is that his participants were American men so it has limited application.

  Other research suggests that women may be more conformist, possibly because they are concerned about social relationships and being accepted.

  Furthermore, the US is an individualistic society (i.e. where people are more concerned about themselves rather than their social group). Similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures (such as China where the social group is more important than the individual) have found that conformity rates are higher.

  This means that Asch's findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures, therefore they have limited application.
• Evaluation: Outline one strength of Asch's research


  One strength of Asch's research is support form other studies for the effects of task difficulty.

  E.g. Todd Lucas et al. asked their participants to solve 'easy' and 'hard' maths problems. Participants were given answers from three other students (not actually real). The participants conformed more often (i.e. agreed with the wrong answers) when the problems were harder.

  This shows that Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity.
• Evaluation: Outline one limitation of Asch's research


  Lucas et al.'s study found that conformity is more complex than Asch suggested. Participants with high confidence in their maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence.

  This shows that an individual-level factor (e.g. confidence) can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables (e.g. task difficulty). But Asch did not research the roles of individual factors.