Baseline Study

• Aim: To examine the extent to which social pressure from a majority could affect a person's likelihood to conform.
• Procedure:

  Participants were told they were having a vision test.

  This deceived ppts by telling them it was a vision test.

  123 Male undergraduate students were tested.

  Showed all ppts 2 large cards at a time.

  1. Standard line
  2. 3 lines, one was the same others were different lengths.
• 1 of these lines was the same length as the standard line.

  This was clear.
• Ppts was asked which of the other lines (A,B or C) matched the standard line.
• Each ppt was tested individually within a group of 6-8 confederates, saying their answers out loud.
• For the first few trials, the confederates gave the right answer.
• However on 12/18 of the trials, confederates were instructed to give the wrong answers.
• Results:

  On the critical trials, the ppts gave the incorrect answer 36.8% of the time.

  This shows conformity happened 1/3 of the time during the trials.

  25% of the ppts did not conform on any of the 12 critical trials.

  Meaning that 75% conformed at least once.
• Conclusion:

  Results are called: Asch effect.

  People conformed when the situation is unambiguous.

  Ppts were interviewed after, and the interviewee found that most of the ppts conformed due to NSI. This is when the ppts conformed due to wanting to be well-liked.

  Some of the other ppts conformed due to believing the group was correct (ISI.) This is when the ppts conformed due to wanting to be always right.
• Some problems with this baseline study are:

  • There are ethical issue, Deception and there is no informed consent.
  • The sample is unrepresentative.
  • There are potential investigator effects.
  • There are demand characteristics.
  • There is a lack of validity.
  • The task is artificial.