conformity

• definition of conformity?


  a change in a persons behavior or opinion as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or a group of people.
• why did Asch carry out this experiement?


  because he wanted to figure out why people conformed
• What was Asch's procedure when carrying out this experiment?


  -123 men were tested

  -each participant were show two large white cards on each trial

  -on one card that showed the x is the standard line and lines A, B, C were comparison lines

  -one comparison line is the same as the standard line and the other lines are clearly different(wrong answers)

  -on each trial the participants had to say (out loud) which line was the same as x
• How were the participants arranged and what were they told to do?


  -groups contained 6-8 people

  -only one participant was a naïve participant the rest were confederates

  -naïve pp sat close to the end of the group

  -confederates were told to state the incorrect answers when show the lines to see if the naïve participant conformed.

  -naive participants did not know the others were 'fake' pps
• what were Asch's findings?


  35% of the time the naïve pp conformed

  25%of people didn't give the wrong answers
• what time of task was this?

  unambiguous
• what is the meaning of unambiguous?


  a task were the answer is certain
• what were the three variables that Asch investigated that lead to an increase or decrease in conformity?


  -group size

  -task difficulty

  -unanimity
• how did Asch test the affects of group size on conformity and what were his findings?

  -varied the amount of confederates from 1-15

  findings:

  -Asch found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity

  -conformity increased with group size only until a certain point

  -the biggest change to conformity was when the confederates increased from 2-3 pps as it increased by 30%
• what does the conformity increase due to group size show?


  most people are sensitive to the view of others as 1-2 confederates was enough to sway the opinions.
• how did Asch test the affect of unanimity on conformity and was his findings?


  -Asch introduced another pp that disagreed with the confederates

  -in one variation this person gave the correct answer and in another they gave the wrong answer.

  findings:

  -the genuine participant conformed less when there was a dissenter present, it gave them the confidence to act more independently
• what does the decrease in conformity suggest due to unanimity?


  the influence on majority largely depends on being unanimous

  -non conformity is more likely when a dissenter disagreed with the real pp
• how did Asch test the affects of task difficulty on conformity and were his findings?


  -increased difficulty of the lines by making the other lines more similar to the stimulus line

  findings:

  -conformity increased

  -the tasks seems more ambiguous when it becomes harder, = harder for the participants to see the correct answer.
• what are the limitations of Asch's research on conformity?

  -task and situation were artificial

  -demand characteristic

  -do not generalise to real life situations

  -all his research was done on American men, therefore findings can't be generalised to women and other collectivist cultures making it less reliable

  -Lucas et al proved that conformity isn't as simplistic as to what Asch suggested
• what are some strengths to Asch's research to conformity?


  -studies of how task difficulty affects conformity which has been proved to be a very important variable as to why people conform.
• How did Lucas et al counterpoint Asch's study into conformity?


  His participants were intelligent mathematicians and engineers and were less likely to conform when the task difficulty increased due to high confidence.

  -Asch did not research the individual factors that effect conformity
• what are some ethical issues with Asch's study to conformity?


  The naive participants were deceived as they were told that the experiment was an eye test therefore weren't told the true nature of the experiment.