Asch's Research

• Conformity is a change in a person's behaviour or opinions as a result of a real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.
• Group Size - Asch increased the size of a group by adding more confederates, thus increasing the size of the majority. Conformity can increase with group size, but only up to a point, levelling off when the majority was greater than three.
• Unanimity - The extent to which all the members of a group agree. In Asch's studies, the majority was unanimous when all the confederates selected the same comparison line. This produced the greatest degree of conformity in the naïve participants.
• Task Difficulty - Asch's line-judging task is more difficult when it becomes harder to work out the correct answer. Conformity increase because naïve participants assume that the majority is more likely to be right.
• Asch used 123 American male participants.
• Asch's participants were tested, each one in a group with other apparent participants. Each participant were shown a standard line and 3 comparison lines. One of which was clearly the same length as the standard line.
• The participants were tested in groups of 6-8. Only one was a genuine participant (always seated close to last) and the others are confederates which all gave the same incorrected scripted answer.
• On average, the genuine participants agreed with comfederates' incorrect answer 36.8% of the time. There were individual differences, 25% of the participants never gave a wrong answer.
• Asch's unanimity test suggests that the influence of the majority depends to a large extent on the research being unanimous. And that non-conformity is more likely when cracks are percieved in the majority's unianimous view.
• Asch's group size test suggests that most people are very sensitive to the views of others because just one or two confederates was enough to sway opinion of a genuine participant.
• To test the effect of group size he varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15. Asch found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity. Conforimity increased to 31.8% as the rate quickly levelled off when over 7 confederates.
• The presence of a dissenter appeared to free the genuine participant to behave more independently. This was true even when the dissenter disagreed with the genuine participant.
• Asch found that conformity increased when the task became more difficult. In these circumstances, it is natural to look to the other people for guidance and assume that they are right (ISI).
• Limitation Asch's Research - Artificial Situation

  • Participants knew that they were in a research study and may experience demand characteristics.
  • The task was relatively trivial and therefore there was no reason to not conform.
  • Susan Fiske suggested that they did not really resemble real groups.

  Research cannot be generalised to the real world.
• Limitation Asch's Research - Limited Application

  • Women may be more conformist as they are more concerned with social relationships and being accepted (Neto 1995)
  • USA is an individualist culture so it may not be applicable in places such as China which is more collectivist. (Bond and Smith 1996)

  This means Asch's findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from other cultures.
• Strength Asch's Research - Research Support

  • Lucas et al (2006) asked particpants to solve maths questions ranging in difficulty.
  • Participants agreed with the confederates more often when the task was more difficult.

  COUNTERPOINT - Lucas et al found that conformity is more complex than Asch suggested.

  • Those with high confidence conformed less often on hard tasks.
  • Asch did not take individual differences into account.
• Limitation Asch's Research - Ethical Issues.

  • The naïve participants were decieved as they though the confederates were also genuine participants.
  • The ethical cost should be weighed up against the benefits gained from the study.