Asch 1956

• Asch wanted to see see how normative social interference impacted participants answers to an obvious question.
• 123 male US undergraduates were used and asked to look at three lines, commenting on which one was the same legnth as the standard line.
• Confederates were instructed to give the same incorrect answer.
• Through the twelve critical trials the conformity rate was 33%. Asch also discovered individual differences in conformity rates.
• Without confederates, he found that the participants only gave wrong answers 1% of the time.
• The majority of the participants had continued to privately trust their perception but outwardly changed their behaviour to avoid disapproval.
• The real participant always answered last.
• Asch found there were three variables affecting conformity:

  • Group size
  • The unanimity of the majority
  • The difficulty of the task
• Group size- Asch found very little conformity when there were less than 3 confederates but when there were 3, conformity rates jumped to 30%. Adding more from this point made little difference.
• The unanimity of the majority - Asch found that when given the support of another confederate who shared the correct answer, conformity rates dropped to 5.5%. If the confederate gave a different answer to their group but it was wrong, conformity rates still dropped to 9%.
• The difficulty of the task- Asch made a variant to his study where the answer was less clear. The level of conformity increased. Lucas et al looked at the importance of self efficacy (self confidence).
• The generalisability of the study was low due to all participants being white er male Americans from around the same area. There were only 123, which is not a reflective sample size.
• The reliability of the study was high as it within controlled conditions ion a lab experiment. This meant that Asch could finely tune his variables and had ultimate control over them.
• The study has practical applications as it can be used to encourage healthy lifestyles / positive environmental decisions (Linkenbach + Perkins and Schultz et al)
• The ecological validity of the study was low as it was a highly controlled environment and artificial task. Furthermore it is low in temporal validity, as 1950’s America was a very conformist society. There was also a risk of demand characteristics.
• Ethically the study was a concern as the participants were told they were involved in a perception test rather than a study into conformity. They were also deceived in other ways, such as the use of confederates. Debrief was given and a right to withdraw, but the study lacked informed consent.
• Asch’s study may be a ‘child of its time’.

  Perrin and Spencer repeated the study with engineering students in the UK, and only one student conformed out of 396 trials. This suggests that modern society is different to post war conformist America.
• Independent behaviour

  Only 33% of people in the critical trials ended up conforming with the majority, showing a higher level of independence than conformity.