Asch

• Asch found that people were more likely to conform when there was unanimous agreement among confederates.
• Asch had 18 trials and got confederates to give the wrong answer on 12 of the 18 trials

  he wanted to see if the participant would go along with the majority on those trials

  • to make sure this was happening, he also had a control group that tested individually - 0.04% error rate, so he could conclude that the experiment had low task difficulty
• the behaviour of asch's experiments is best explained by normative social influence

  since task difficulty was low and social pressure was high

  participants were most likely displaying compliance
• 75% of participants in the test group conformed at least once

  and participants conformed 36.8% of the time

  25% of participants never conformed
• Asch's sample was all american male undergraduates

  Androcentric beta bias
• size of majority

  two confederates = participants only conformed on 14% of critical trials

  three confederates = participants conformed on 32% of critical trials

  there is little change to conformity when you increase the amount of confederates from three
• unanimity of majority

  participants were joined by another participant or a correct confederate

  conformity decreased to 5.5%

  more unanimity = more confidence in answer

  easier to resist the pressure to conform
• task difficulty

  made the lines more similar

  increases informational social influence

  more likely to conform when people are less confident