Conformity

• Asch's research aim: to asses to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others even if the answer is certain
• Asch's Baseline procedure research was published in 1951
• In ABP participants had to match a standard line to one of 3 comparison lines and state your answer out loud. participants were tested in groups of 6 - 8 containing one genuine participant and confederates
• In ABP the genuine participant was always seated last or second to last so that they heard all the confederates answers first, the genuine participant did not know that the others were fake. the confederates were made to say the obviously wrong answer and see if the genuine participant conformed to the group.
• ABP was performed on 123 white, American, male undergraduates
• The results of ABP showed that 36.8% conformed all the time and 25% never conformed
• Conformity: A change in a person's behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people
• How many trials in total were there for ABP?

  18
• How many of ABP trials were critical?

  12
• 75% of participants conformed atleast once in APB
• Critical experiments (in APB) : when the confederates mostly or all gave the wrong answer
• Weaknesses of Asch: artificial tasks - lines vs social group, low population validity - only men tested, women are more conformist
• asch variables : group size, unanimity, task difficulty
• group size: varied from 2- 16 conformity increased with group size up to 3 people suggesting sensitivity to other views
• unanimity: a confederate would disagree with the majority, conformity fell by 1/4, dissenter caused break
• task difficulty: made comparison and stimulus line similar, conformity increased as ambiguity increased, informational social influence
• Asch strength


  research support - Lucas et al 2006 more difficult the maths question the more likely to conform