Asch's Variations

• Variations

  • Group size
  • Unanimity
  • Task difficulty
• Group size

  • wanted to know whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group
• Asch found that with three confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%
• With group size, the addition of further confederates made little difference
• This suggests that a small majority is not sufficient for influence to be exerted but, at the other extreme, there is no need for a majority of more than three
• Unanimity

  • Asch also wanted to know if the presence of another, non-conforming, person would affect the naive participant's conformity
• To test unanimity, he introduced a confederate who disagreed with others - sometimes the new confederate gave the correct answer and sometimes he gave the wrong one
• During unanimity the confederate is known as the dissenter
• The presence of a dissenter in unanimity meant that conformity was reduced by a quarter from the level it was when the majority was unanimous
• Unanimity - the presence of a dissenter enabled the naive participant to behave more independently, this suggests that the influence of the majority depends to some extent on the group being unanimous
• Task difficulty

  • asch made the line judging task more difficult by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar in length
  • he found that conformity increased under these conditions
• Task difficulty suggests that informational social influence plays a greater role when the task becomes harder, this is because the situation is more ambiguous, so we are more likely to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and we are wrong