Key study-Asch

• The aim of this experiment is to see the extent to which social pressure from a group could affect a person to conform in a unambiguous task.
• The participants were all American men. There was one participant and the rest were all paid confederates. The confederates were then asked to say the correct answers from the lines and which ones were the same length. After a while, they would say the incorrect answers. After that, the participant would say a answer.
• Findings- 75% of the participants conformed to the wrong answers at least once- they conformed 36.8% of the time.
• Conclusion- Conform in a unambiguous situation because they don't wanna stand out
• One strength of Asch's research is that it is a lab experiment. This means that it has good control of the variable they are investigating. As well as this, it can easily be repeated which means people can investigate different factors.
• One negative is it was done in 1950. This is when conformity was more common which means it lacks temporal validity. This means that it doesn't hold up well in todays times
• Another negative is that it lacks ecological validity. This is because it is a artificial setting. This means that it doesn't tell us how people conform in normal situations as you are normally not asked length of lines.
• Another weakness of Asch's research is that is was gender bias sample. The experiment was only done with men only which means it wouldn't tell us how women conform which means it wont tell us how people as a whole conform.
• Another weakness is that it is culture bias. This is because it only uses American males. Different cultures would have different conformity levels as they would be raised differently and would give different results (Based on if there a individualistic or collectivist culture). This is why these results cant be used to say how all people conform.
• Perrin and spencer- They did the same experiment but with engineering students. This is because they are good with measurements. Only 1/396 conformed. This suggests individual difference in conformity as different type of people will not conform as they are confident of there answer.
• Smith and bond- They did Asch's procedure but in different cultures. He did them with collectivist and individual cultures. Collectivist cultures(Africa, Hong Kong) conformity was higher meanwhile individualistic cultures(France, UK) conformity was lower.
• Variation-Group Size

  When there was 1 confederate, real participants conformed on 3% of the trials. When there were 2 confederates, it rose to 12.8%. When there were 3 confederates, it rose to 32%. This is because more people are saying a answer so they were more people willing to conform as there was a clear majority. It made the answer easy to believe.
• Variation- Unanimity

  One Confederate would give the right answer thought. Conformity would drop to 5%. As well as this, one confederate gave a different incorrect answer which lead to conformity dropping to 9%. This is because the group position broke which means that the participant would be able to trust his own judgement better as everyone is giving different answers so there no clear path to follow.
• Variation- Task difficulty

  Made the variation task more difficult by making line length significantly small. This leads to a increase in conformity. This is because of ISI. Individuals look to others for guidance when there's a task they don't understand which is why conformity increases.