Conformity

• Conformity is a change in behaviour as a result of real or perceived pressure from other people or groups
• What was Asch’s 1951 original research?

  • 7-9 fake participants (confederates) gave the wrong answer to a test on line length (the correct answer was obvious)
  • 123 Male American naive participants
  • 12 trials
  • Demonstrated NSI by showing that real participants would conform by also giving the incorrect line due to group pressure
  • Conformed 36.8% of the time
  • 25% of participants never conformed
• How many critical trials were in Asch’s original study?

  12
• What % of Asch’s participants never conformed once?

  25%
• What % of Asch’s participants conformed every time?

  5%
• What were Asch’s 3 variations?

  Group size

  Unanimity

  Task difficulty
• How did Asch vary group size?

  Varied group size from 1-15
• How did Asch vary uunanimity?

  Added a dissented confederate
• How did Asch vary task difficulty?

  Made the line lengths closer
• What happened in Asch’s task difficulty variation?

  Conformity increased

  • Due to less certainty about what is the correct length
  • So partcipants conform due to ISI and NSI
• What % of participants conformed differing group size?

  1 confederate= 3%

  2 confederates=13%

  3 confederates= 33%

  But the percentage did not rise much higher even with 15 confederates
• What happened when the unanimity of the group was broken in Asch’s study and why?

  Conformity was reduced to 5.5% of critical trials.

  • Due to the participant having social support in resisting group pressure
• Describe Perring and Spencer’s (1980) replication of Asch’s research?


  Replicated Asch with engineering students

  Finding only 1 student conformed in 396

  Suggests Asch lacks temporal validity (Cold War conformity) or engineering students are unusual
• What did Lucas et al. (2006) find?

  • Asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems
  • Participants wer given answers from 3 other confederates acting as students
  • Participants conformed more often when the problems were harder
  • Shows Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is a variable that affects conformity
• What type of questions did Rosander ask participants on facebook and what was found?

  Logic and general knowledge questions.

  Participants would conform to incorrect responses

  52% of participants conformed at least once

  Conformity was higher on difficult questions demonstrating the role of ISI
• What were the aims of Asch’s baseline procedure?

  To measure the extent that people conformed to the opinion of others, even in a situation when the other’s answers were clearly wrong
• What was Asch’s baseline procedure?

  123 male American participants were tested individually, sitting last or next to last in a group of 6 to 8 confederates.

  They were shown 2 larges cards

  • on one was a standard line
  • on the other were 3 comparison lines- 1 of which was the same length as the standard line and the other 2 were clearly different

  Each group member stated which of the 3 lines matched the standard.

  There were 18 trials of different pairs of cards.

  • on 12 of these critical trials the confederates all gave the same clearly wrong answer
• What were the findings and conclusions of Asch’s baseline procedure?

  Found that the naive participants conformed 36.8% of the time

  • high level of conformity when the situation is unambiguous

  There were individual differences

  • 25% of participants never have a wrong answer and so never conformed
  • but 75% conformed at least once

  Asch then conducted further studies where he showed that certain variables lead to more or less conformity
• What are the variables Asch investigated?

  Group size, unanimity and task difficulty
• Variable 1- Group size

  Procedure

  • Asch varied the number of confederates in each group between 1 and 15

  Findings

  • relationships between group size and level of conformity was curvilinear
  • when there were 2 confederates conformity to the wrong answer was 13.6% and when there were 3 confederates conformity rose to 31.8%
  • above 3 confederates, conformity rate levelled off
  • adding more than 3 confederates made little difference

  People are very sensitive to opinions of others bacuase just 1 confederate was enough to sway opinion
• Variable 2- Unanimity

  Procedure

  • Asch introduced a dissenting confederate who sometimes gave correct answers but sometimes gave a wrong answer but always disagreed with the majority

  Findings

  • with a dissenter conformity reduced on average to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous
  • Conformity reduced if dissenter gave the right or wrong answer

  Having a dissenter enabled the naive participant to behave more independently
• Variable 3- Task difficulty

  Procedure

  • Asch made the line judging task harder by making the stimulus line and comparison lines more similar in length
  • So making it more difficult to see differences between the lines

  Findings

  • Conformity increased

  The situation is more ambiguous and so we are more likely to look to others for guidance and assume that they’re right and we’re wrong.

  • this is informational social influence
• low external validity- A03

  The situation and the task were artificial

  • low mundane realism

  Participants knew they were in a research study

  • demand characteristics

  the task was trivial and there was no reason not to conform.

  Fiske (2014)

  • argued that Asch’s groups weren’t like real life groups

  this means the findings don’t generalise to everyday life

  • especially situations where the consequences of conformity are important
• Limited application- A03

  Only American men were used.

  Neto (1995)

  • suggested that women might be more conformist
  • possibly because they’re more concerned about social relationships and being accepted

  The US is an individualist culture and studies in collectivist cultures have found higher conformity rates.

  Means Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures
• Supporting evidence- A03

  Lucas et al. (2006)

  • asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems
  • participants were given answers that falsely claimed to be from 3 other students
  • the participants conformed more often when the problems were harder

  shows Asch was correct that task difficulty is a variable affecting conformity
• More complex- A03

  Conformity is more complex than Asch thought

  Lucas et al.’s study showed that conformity was related to confidence

  • high confidence = less conformity

  hows that individual level factors interact with situational ones

  • but Asch didn’t investigate individual factors
• Ethical issues- A03

  Asch’s research increased our knowledge of why people conform

  • may help avoid future mindless destructive conformity

  But participants were deceived and so didn’t give informed consent to take part and may have experienced harm to their confidence or self esteem

  so we might argue that the research was justified becuase there are a wide range of potential applications and the stress caused was likely minimal