variables effecting conformity

• 3 variables effecting conformity -

  • task difficulty
  • group size
  • unanimity
• Asch's study consisted of 123 American undergraduate students, divided into groups of 6 with 5 confederates and 1 true participant
• Asch's study found that:

  36.8% conformed. 25% never conformed. 75% conformed at least once
• group size-Asch found that an individual is more likely to conform when in a larger group. when there was more than 3 and the conformity rose to 31%. this is because a person is more likely to conform if all members of the group give the same answer, because it will increase their confidence in correctness of the group, and decrease their confidence in their own answer. However.... Conformity does not seem to increase in groups larger than four 
• unanimity -Asch found that An individual is more likely to conform when the group is unanimous. when he introduced a confederate who disagreed with other confederates and gave a different wrong answer, the participant conformed less
• task difficulty - Asch found that An individual is more likely to conform when the task is difficult, he altered the (comparison) lines making them more similar in length. Since it was harder to judge the correct answer conformity increased. When the task is difficult, we are more uncertain of our answer so we look to others for confirmation. The more difficult the task the greater the conformity
• Asch's study lacks population validity due to sampling issues - For example, the participants were only American male undergraduates, and so the study was subject to gender bias, where it is assumed that findings from male participants can be generalised to females (i.e. beta bias).
• Asch's study supports normative social influence - participants reported that they conformed to fit in with the group, so it supports the idea of normative influence, which states that people conform to fit in when privately disagreeing with the majority.