Asch (1951)

• what was Asch's baseline procedure?

  to examine the ideas of conformity. Devised a procedure to assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others, even in a situation where the answer is certain (unambiguous)
• How were the participants arranged in Asch's study?

  123 American males tested in groups of 6 - 8 only one was a genuine participant seated last or second to last in the group. Confederates of Ash gave the same scripted incorrect answer.
• What did participants in Asch's study have to do?

  See two large white cards on each trial. One card with the standard line and the other with three comparison lines. Participants had to say out loud which comparison line was the same as the standard line.
• What were the baseline findings in Asch's study?


  On average just over (1/3) 36.8% of the time, participants conformed and gave a wrong answer the same as the confederates. 75% conformed at least once. 25% never conformed and resisted to social influence to conform.
• What happened in Lucas et al's study from research support?

  Asked participants to solve 'easy' and 'hard' maths problems. participants were given answers from 3 other unreal students.
• what was found in Lucas et al's study?

  participants conformed more often when problems were harder. This shows Asch was correct in claiming task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity.
• what else did Lucas et al measure and what did they find?

  confidence (roles of individual factors) - interaction of situational variables. Those with higher maths confidence conformed less on hard tasks than those with lower maths confidence.
• what are the three variables affecting conformity in Asch's research?

  group size - 3 is the magic number. With 3 confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to31.8%, the presence of more made little difference and soon levelled off. He varied number of confederates from 1 to 15.Unanimity - could undermine both ISI and NSI. A confederate who disagreed was introduced and the genuine participant conformed less.Task difficulty - the more ambiguous the task the more powerful ISI is.
• what are criticisms of Asch's research?

  a child of its time - Americans in 1950s had fear of communism

  .How much like real life - lacks ecological validity

  Artificial setting - demand characteristics

  .Generalisabilty - all men, all american, individualist culture, collective culture.
• Fiske's 2014 critique of Asch.

  Asch's groups were not very groupy. groups used were not cohesive, there were no long standing relationships, status dynamic ect. may not represent real group conformity.