Asch's Research

• What were the results of Asch's research?

  • 36.8% (of the time) - naive participants gave a wrong answer
  • 25% - didn't conform
  • 75% - conformed at least once
  • 'Asch Effect' - extent to which participants conform even when the answer's unambiguous
  • Interview afterwards - most participants conformed to avoid rejection
• What were Asch's variations?

  • Carried out numerous variations based on his original procedure to test other factors that influence conformity
  • Some are likely to increase conformity, others likely to decrease conformity
• What variation did Asch do with Group size?

  • He found that with 3 confederates the rate of conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%
  • Adding more confederates made little difference
  • There's no need to have a majority of more than 3 for conformity to happen
• What variation did Asch do with Unanimity?

  • Introduced confederate who disagreed with the others
  • He was instructed to sometimes give the correct answer and sometimes the wrong one
  • The dissenter's presence made the rise of conformity drop by a quarter and made the naive participant behave more independently
  • Influence of majority depends partly on the group being unanimous
• What variation did Asch do with task difficulty?

  • One of the variations made the task more difficult through making the stimulus line and comparison lines more similar in length
  • Conformity increases in the condition
  • ISI plays a greater role when the task becomes harder as people look to others for guidance -> assume they're right and we're wrong
• Why is a limitation of Asch's study that it was an Artificial stimulation and task?

  • The participants knew that they're taking part in an experiment & might have displayed demand characteristics
  • Identifying lines is a very simple task so there was no reason not to conform
  • The group the naive participant was in didn't resemble groups that we're part of in everyday life
  • Finding's don't generalise to everyday situations especially where the consequences of conformity might have been more important & where we interact with other people in groups in a much more direct way
• What was Asch's procedure and how did he test it?

  • He tested conformity through showing his participants 2 large white cards
  • There was a 'standard line' on one card and the other had 3 'comparison lines'
  • The participants were asked which one of the 3 lines matched the standard line
• Who were Asch's participants and how were they organised?

  • They were 123 male american undergraduates
  • Each group had one naive participant and 6-8 confederates
  • The naive participant wasn't aware that the others were confederates
• How were the trials?

  • 1st few trials - confederate gave the right answer but started making errors
  • There were 18 trials
  • 12 critical trials - confederates gave the wrong answer
• What did most participants say when interviewed answers?

  That they conformed to avoid rejection
• What did Perrin and Spencer (1980) do?

  • Repeated Asch's study with engineering students in the UK
  • Only one student conformed in 396 trials which may be because engineering students felt more confident about measuring lines and were less conformist
• Why is Asch's study a 'child of it's time' ?

  • Possible that 1950's were an especially conformist time in America and that people may be less conformist today
  • This means that the Asch effect isn't consistent across different time periods and lack Temporal validity
• Why does Asch's findings only apply to certain groups of people?

  • Only men were tested (gender biased)
  • Findings can't be generalised to everybody, demonstrating that Asch's study lacks population validity
• What did Nero (1955) say?

  Women might be even more conformist, possibly as they're more concerned about social relationships and being accepted than men
• What did Smith and Bond (1988) say?

  • Men in Asch's study were American, individualistic culture
  • Similar studies have been conducted in collectivist cultures found that conformity rates are higher as those cultures are more orientated to group needs