Ach's Study

• What were the aims of Asch's study?

  Measure the extent to which people conformed to the opinion of others, even in a situation where the others' answers were clearly wrong
• What was Asch's procedure?

  • Ps shown 2 cards, had to match line on 1st card to a line on the 2nd card.
  • Confederates (all but one) said the wrong answer
• What were the findings of Asch's research?

  • Naïve participants conformed 36.8% of the time, shows a high level of conformity when the situation is unambiguous.
  • 75% conformed at least once
• What were the 3 variables Asch investigated?

  • Group size
  • Unanimity
  • Task difficulty
• How did Asch investigate group size?

  Varied the number of confederates between 1 and 15
• What were Asch's findings for group size?

  • Relationship between group size and level of conformity was curvilinear
  • 2 confederates conformity was 13.6%, 3 confederates conformity rose to 31.8%. levelled off after this
• How did Asch investigate unanimity?

  Introduced a dissenting confederate, sometimes gave the correct answer or a different, incorrect answer
• What were the findings for unanimity?

  • Conformity reduced to less than 1/4 of the level it was when there was no dissenter.
  • Reduced regardless of right or wrong answer
• Why did the dissenter reduce conformity?

  Allowed the participant to behave more independently
• How did Asch study task difficulty?

  Made the line-judging task harder by making the lines more similar in length
• What were the findings of increasing task difficulty?

  Conformity increased
• Why did conformity increase when the task increased in difficulty?

  • The situation was more ambiguous, more likely to look to others for guidance and assume they are right
  • Example of ISI
• Limitations of Asch study?

  • Artificial task
  • Little application - only American men tested. Neto (1995) suggested women might be more conformist due to concern of social relationships
  • Collectivist cultures might behave differently
• Strength of Asch research:

  • Other evidence to support
  • Lucas et al - asked Ps to solve 'easy' and 'hard' maths problems. Given answers claimed to be from 3 others. conformed more often when the problems were harder