Conformity- Asch’s research

• Asch effect


  A term used to describe the very human tendency for us sometimes to do as others do rather than what we feel is right.
• Aim of Asch’s baseline study

  • Investigate the extent to which social pressure from majority group could affect a person to conform.
• Asch’s procedure

  • 123 male US undergraduates took part in what they were told was a study of visual perception.
  • Set up in a situation in which 7 people sat looking at a display.
  • Given the task of saying out loud which one of the 3 lines was the same length as a given stimulus line. Correct answer was always obvious.
  • All participants except one were confederates.
  • Genuine/naive participants was always the second last one to answer.
  • Confederates were instructed to give the same incorrect answer on 12 critical trials out of 18.
• Findings of Asch‘s baseline study

  • 36.8% conformity rate to wrong answers I.e participants conformed to the incorrect response given by confederates.
  • 75% of participants conformed to at least one wrong answer.
  • 25% of participants never gave a wrong answer.
• Conclusion from Asch’s study

  • The judgements of individuals are affected by majority opinions, even when the majority are obviously wrong.
  • When participants were interviewed after most said they conformed in order to avoid rejection.
  • As most participants performed publicly, but not privately it suggests that they were motivated by normative social influence.
• Asch’s 3 variations

  • Group size
  • Unanimity
  • Task difficulty
• Asch’s group size

  • Asch increased the size of the group by adding more confederates, thus increasing the size of the majority.
• Asch’s variations- Unanimity

  • The extent to which all the members of the group agree.
• Asch’s- task difficulty

  • Increasing the level of difficulty of the line-judging task, which makes it harder to work out the correct answer.
• Group size

  • Found that 3 confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%
  • Addition of further confederates made little difference.
  • Small majority is not sufficient for influence to be exerted but, at the other extreme there is no need for the majority to be more than 3.
• Unanimity

  • When the real participant was given the support of a confederate who had been instructed to give the right answers throughout. Conformity levels dropped significantly, reducing the percentage of wrong answers to 5.5%
  • When the lone dissenter gave an answer that was both different to majority and different from the true answer, conformity rates dropped to 9%.
  • Asch concluded the presence of the dissenter appeared to free the naive participant to behave more independently.
• Task difficulty

  • Made the line-judging task more difficult by making the stimulus line and comparison lines more similar in length.
  • Conformity increased under these conditions.
  • Suggested informational social influence plays a greater role when the task becomes harder.
  • 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.
• Artificial stimulus/tasks

  • For example, participants knew they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with what was expected (demand characteristics)
  • The other issues with the task was identifying lines is a trivial task and therefore there was no reason to conform. Fisk argued that the groups in the experiment did not resemble everyday life.
  • Therefore this means the finding do not generalise to real-world situations, making the experiment by Asch lack external validity
• Limited application- sample consisted of all American men

  • Other research has suggested that women may be more conformist, possibly because they are more concerned about social relationships and being accepted (Neto)
  • Conformity studies conducted in collectivist culture such as china, where the social group is more important than the individual. Have found that conformity rates are higher (Bond and Smith). Whereas USA is an individualistic culture.
  • Therefore this means that Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures.
• Research support

  • task difficulty variable
  • Lucas et al, asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems. Results showed the participants conformed more often when problems were harder.
  • Suggests people conform due to lack of knowledge and refer to others as a source of guidance.
  • Shows Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity.
  • However Lucas et al, found conformity to be more complex than Asch. Participants with high confidence in their maths ability were less likely to conform on hard tasks in comparison to people with low confidence.
• Ethical issues

  • Asch’s study required the use of deception. The naive participants thought the confederates were genuine participants in the study.
  • If participants are derived it means they do not understand what is really involved in the study. So cannot make informed decisions to take part. Also means they may be exposed to negative psychological consequences such as stress, anxiety.
  • This questions the extent to which the study was justified due to ethical sacrifices involved.