conformity

• what is conformity

  'a change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people'
• who researched conformity

  Asch 1951
• Asch's baseline procedure aim

  to assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others, even in a situation where the answer is certain
• Asch's baseline procedure

  123 American men

  tested in groups of 6-8 confederates

  naive participant was always seated second to last or last

  confederates were instructed to all give the same (incorrect) answer
• how did Asch test conformity in the baseline procedure

  standard and comparison lines

  one of the comparison lines is always clearly the same length as X

  on each trial each participant had to identify (say out loud) the comparison which was the same length as X

  
• Asch baseline findings

  36.8% of the time= pps agreed with confederates incorrect answers

  25% of pps= never gave a wrong answer

  75%=0.75 confirmed at least once
• when did Asch do extend his baseline study

  1955
• aim of Asch's extended baseline study

  to investigate the variables that might lead to an increase or a decrease in conformity
• variables that Asch investigated

  group size

  unanimity

  task difficulty
• aim of changing group size

  to find out whether the size of the group should be more important than the agreement of the group
• who did Asch investigated the impact of group size

  he varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15
• findings of Asch

  there is a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate

  conformity increased with groups size up to a point

  3 confederates= 31.8% conformity

  more confederates= made little difference

  
• group size conclusion

  suggests that most people are very sensitive to the views of others because just one or two confederates was enough to sway opinion
• aim of unanimity variable

  to investigate if the presence of a non-conforming person would affect the naive participants conformity
• how did Asch investigate unanimity

  by introducing a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates

  one variation= confederate gave the correct answer

  another variation= confederate aged a different wrong answer
• findings of unanimity and conformity

  genuine participant conformed less often in presence of dissenter

  conformed decreased in presence of a dissenter

  rate decreased to less than a quarter of level when the majority was unanimous
• conclusion of the impact of unanimity

  suggests that the influence of the maifority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous

  nonconformity is more like when cracks are perceived in the majority unanimous view
• aim of task difficulty variable

  to investigate whether making the task harder would affect the degree of conformity
• how did Asch investigate the impact of task difficulty

  he increased the difficulty of the line-judging task

  made the stimulus line and comparison lines more similar in length

  meant it was harder for genuine participants to see the difference between the lines
• findings of task difficulty variable

  conformity increased
• reasons for the change in conformity in task difficulty

  the right answer was unclear

  participants natural look to others for guidance and assume they are right (ISI)
• strengths of Asch's research

  research support (Lucas et al)
• what did Lucas et al (2006) research

  the effects of task difficulty
• procedure of Lucas et al

  asked participants to solve 'easy' and 'hard' math problems

  participants were given answers from three other students
• findings of Lucas et al

  pps conformed more when the problems were harder
• conclusion of Lucas et al

  shows Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity
• limitations of Asch's research

  artificial stimuli

  demand characteristics - Fiske

  limited application (androcentric and Americans) - Neto

  individual factors that affect conformity
• what did Fiske (2014) say about Asch's research

  'Asch's groups weren't very groupy'

  did not resemble groups that we experience in everyday life
• conclusions of Fiske

  the findings of Asch don't generalise to real world situations

  especially where the consequences of conformity are important
• research of Neto (1995)

  the US is an individualistic culture and doesn't represent collective cultures

  research in collective cultures (e.g. China) have found that conformity raters are higher
• conclusion of Neto

  Asch's findings tell us little about conformity of all cultures so they can't be generalised to all