Conformity- Asch's Research

• Asch's Aims:

  Aimed to assess the extent people will conform to opinions of others, even in situations where the answer is certain.
• Asch's Baseline Procedure:

  123 American male p's were tested, each p was in a group with several confederates. They saw 2 white cards on each trial- one had three comparison lines labelled A, B and C; the second had a line labelled 'X' which needed to be matched. On each trial, p's had to state which of the comparison lines matched the standard line 'X'. They were seated in tables of 7, with the participant always answering 6th. Study lacks population validity.
• Variables Investigated by Asch: Group Size

  Asch varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15. He found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate. It increased with group size to a point- with 3 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8% but the presence of more confederates made little difference as rates then leveled off. Suggesting most people are sensitive to the views of others, just 1 or 2 confederates was enough to sway opinions.
• Variables Investigated by Asch: Unanimity

  Testing whether the presence of a non-conforming person would affect the naïve p's conformity. Asch then introduced a confederate who disagreed with the majority and either chose the right answer, or the second wrong option. The genuine p's conformed less in the presence of a dissenter, allowing them to behave more independently, this was even true when they gave the second wrong answer.

  Suggesting the influence of the majority depends on being unanimous, and non-conformity is likely when cracks are perceived in the majority's view.
• Variables Investigated by Asch: Task Difficulty

  Asch increased the difficulty of the line-judgement task by making the standard and comparison lines more similar in length. Meaning it was harder for the genuine p's to see the differences in the lines. It was found that conformity increased, it may be that the situation is more ambiguous when the task is harder- so p's looked for guidance and assumed the confederates were correct. This is an example of Informational Social Influence.
• AO3: Artificial Situation and Task

  P's knew they were in a research study, and may have experienced demand characteristics. The task of identifying lines is relatively trivial and therefore there wasn't any reason not to conform.

  Fiske argues that the groups in the study weren't very applicable to real-life scenarios. Meaning these findings cannot be generalised, especially to situations were consequences of conformity are important.
• AO3: Limited Application

  All p's in the study were American men; other research suggests that women are more conformist, possibly due to them being more concerned about their social relationships and acceptance, Neto claims.

  Furthermore, the US is an individualistic culture where people are more concerned about themselves than their social group. Similar conformity studies were conducted in collectivist cultures, such as China (Bond and Smith) which have found that conformity rates are higher.

  Asch's findings are limited to American men.
• AO3: Research Support

  A strength is support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty. For example, Lucas et al asked p's to solve an easy and hard maths question, they were also given answers from three other confederates. P's conformed more when the questions were harder- demonstrating that task difficulty is a variable which effects conformity.
• AO3: Counterpoint to Research Support

  Lucas et al's study did find conformity is more complex than Asch suggested. P's with high confidence in their maths ability conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence. Showing that individual-level factors (personality, knowledge and experience) can influence conformity by interacting with other situational variables (e.g. task difficulty). But Asch didn't research the roles of this.
• AO3: Ethical Issues

  Though Asch's research increased our knowledge of why people conform, which can help avoid mindless destructive conformity. The naïve p's were deceived; they thought the confederates were actually involved with the study. It is worth noting that the ethical cost should be weighed up about the benefits gained from the study.
• AO3: A Child of its Time

  Perrin and Spencer repeated Asch's study with engineering students in the UK. Only 1 student conformed in a total of 396 trials. Possibly students felt more confident about measuring the lines than original sample, so were less conformist. Asch's study may lack temporal validity; in the 1950s it was a conformist time in America, therefore it made sense for p's to conform to the established social norms. But maybe now people may have become less conformist. As the effect isn't consistent over situations and time, it may not be a crucial feature of human behaviour.