Asch

• Asch devised a procedure to measure the extent that people conformed to the opinion of others, even in a situation when the others answers were clearly wrong. The baseline procedure describes this
• Asch found that naive participants conformed 36.8% of the time. This shows a high level of conformity when the situation is unambiguous. There were individual differences, 25% of the participants never gave a wrong answer. 75% conformed at least once
• Group size - procedure:

  Asch varied the number of confederates in each group between 1 and 15
• Group size - findings:

  The relationship between group size and the level of conformity was curvilinear. If there were 2 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer was 13.6%. 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
• Group size - explanation:

  People were very sensitive to opinions of other people because just one confederate was enough to sway opinion
• Unanimity - procedure:

  Asch introduced a dissenting confederate, sometimes gave the correct answer and sometimes gave the wrong answer (but always disagreed with majority)
• Unanimity - findings:

  In the presence of the dissenter, conformity reduced on average to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous. Conformity reduced is dissenter gave the right or wrong answer
• Unanimity - explanation:

  Having a dissenter enabled the naive participant to behave more independently
• Task difficulty - procedure:

  Asch made the line judging test harder by making the stimulus line and comparison lines more similar in length. Thus it was difficult to see differences between the lines
• Task difficulty - findings:

  Conformity increased
• Task difficulty - explanation:

  The situation is more ambiguous, so we are more likey to look to others for guidance and to assume they are right and we are wrong. This is informative social influence - plays a great role when the task becomes harder
• One limitation is that the situation and task were artificial. Participants knew they were in a research study (demand characteristics). The task was trivial and there was no reason not to conform. Also, Fiske argued that Asch's groups were not like real life groups. This means the findings do not generalise everyday life (low external validity)
• One strength is other evidence to support Asch's findings. Lucas et al 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. This shows Asch was correct that task difficulty is one variable affecting conformity
• A counterpoint to Asch's supporting evidence is that conformity is more complex than Asch thought. Lucas et al's study showed that conformity was related to confidence (high confidence = less conformity). This shows that individual-level factors interact with situational ones. But Asch did not investigate individual factors
• A limitation is that Asch's findings have little application. Only American men were tested by Asch. Neto suggested that women might be more conformist, possibly because they are more concerned about social relationships. Also the USA is an individualist culture and in collectivist cultures e.g: China have found higher conformity rates (Bond and Smith). This means Asch's findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures
• Asch's research increased our knowledge of why people conform, which may help avoid mindless destructive conformity. But when participants are deceived they cannot give their informed consent to take part and may have a negative experience. Therefore, we might still argue that the research was justified because there are a wide range of potential applications and the stress caused was minimal