Asch’s conformity study (1951/1955)

• Aim – To see if participants would conform to the majority by giving incorrect answers even when the correct answers were obvious.
• How many American male student volunteers participated in the study?

  123
• What did the participants believe the study was about?

  A study on visual perception
• How were the individual participants grouped during the study?

  In groups of 7-9 others
• What was the role of the confederates in the study?

  They provided wrong answers
• Where did the participants sit during the study?

  In a line or around a table
• What was the task given to the participants?

  Identify the matching comparison line
• When did the real participant answer in the group?

  Last or second to last
• How many critical trials were there in the study?

  18
• How many times did the confederates give the same wrong answer?

  12 out of 18 trials
• How many participants were in the control group?

  36
• Results – The control group had an error rate of only 0.04% (three mistakes out of 720 trials).

  In the 12 critical trials, there was a 36.8% conformity rate to the wrong answers.  75% of participants conformed at least once, which meant 25% never conformed.  5% of participants conformed to all 12 wrong answers.
• How many trials were the control group tested on?

  20 trials
• Conclusion - When they were interviewed after the experiment, most of the participants said that they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed or thought "peculiar". A few of them said that they really did believe the group's answers were correct.  This suggests that most participants conformed to be accepted – normative social influence.
• SIZE OF GROUP:

  • Research suggests that conformity rates

  increase as the size of the majority influence increases BUT there comes a point where further increases in the size of the majority doesn’t lead to further increases in conformity.

  • Asch found that with 1 participant and 1 confederate conformity was low but with 1 participant and 2 confederates, it rose to 13% and with 3 confederates, it rose to 32%.  Adding more confederates did not increase conformity as it plateaued after 3 so the size of the majority is only important up to a point.
• What happens to conformity rates when majority influence is not unanimous?

  Conformity rates decline
• How does the presence of a dissenter affect conformity?

  It reduces conformity rates
• What did Asch find about conformity when another participant gave the right answer?

  Conformity dropped to 5.5%
• What was the effect on conformity when one confederate gave a different wrong answer?

  Conformity fell to 9%
• What conclusion did Asch draw regarding the group's unanimous position?

  It is a major factor in conformity reduction
• 3. TASK DIFFICULTY: If the task becomes harder and the right answer becomes less obvious, the conformity levels increase.

  Asch made the difference in the line lengths much smaller so that the correct answer was less obvious and found that the level of conformity increased because the participants look to the other ‘participants’ for more guidance.  This supports ISI rather than NSI because the participants were not going along with an obviously wrong answer to ‘fit in’; they were looking to other participants to help them decide on the right answer because they didn’t know it themselves.
• Ash's Variations

  • Size of group
  • Unanimity
  • Task difficulty
• Strengths:

  • One strength is in the procedure of Asch’s method.

  To ensure that participants were conforming and not giving what they believed to be correct answers, he used a control group.  This demonstrated that the task was easy as the error rate was only 0.04%.

  Therefore, this increases the likelihood that the participants were yielding to the group pressure and therefore increases the validity of the results and means that participants were conforming due to normative social influence. 
• What is one strength of Asch's study?

  There is supporting research
• What did Crutchfield's (1955) experiment involve?

  Participants sat in cubicles answering questions
• What type of questions were projected in Crutchfield's experiment?

  Simple questions similar to Asch's
• What was the false condition participants were told in Crutchfield's study?

  They were the last to guess
• How did the experimenter manipulate the participants' experience in Crutchfield's study?

  Other participants' answers were visible to them
• What percentage of conformity was found in Crutchfield's study?

  30%
• How does Crutchfield's study relate to Asch's findings?

  It found similar levels of conformity
• What does the supporting research from Crutchfield's study suggest about Asch's study?

  It makes Asch's study more reliable
• What type of social influence does Crutchfield's study support?

  Normative social influence
• What is one weakness of Asch's research?

  Lacks temporal validity
• Why is Asch's research considered a 'child of its time'?

  It reflects social norms of the 1950s
• How did the social climate of the 1950s affect conformity?

  People conformed to avoid standing out
• What significant social issue affected Americans in the 1950s?

  Accusations of being communists
• What was a consequence of being accused of communism in the 1950s?

  People lost their jobs
• How did the fear of communism influence individual behavior in the 1950s?

  It led to increased conformity among individuals
• How does current society differ from the 1950s regarding conformity?

  People are more independent now
• What does the lack of temporal validity suggest about Asch's findings?

  They may not apply to current society