Asch

• Asch’s Baseline Procedure (1951)-

  Aim: assess to what extent people will conform to the opinions of others even when the answer is certain. 123 American men tested on matching lines to original line (it was apparent). Genuine pps agreed with confederates 36% of the time. 
• What were Asch's variables?

  • Group size
  • Unanimity
  • Task difficulty
• What did group size do to change conformity?

  Increased the size of the group by adding more confederates which increased the majority. Asch found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity. With 3 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8% but the presence of more confederates had little effect and it levelled off. Findings: suggests most people are sensitive to the view of others
• What did unanimity do to change conformity?

  Asch introduced a dissenter to agree with the genuine participant. They conformed less often in presence of this dissenter. This suggests that influence of majority depends on it being unanimous. 
• What did task difficulty do to conformity?

  Asch made it more difficult to discern what line was correct. Conformity increased because naive participants assume that the majority is correct. Is an example of Informative social influence (ISI)
• Strengths and weaknesses of Asch

  + Task difficulty supported by Lucas et al (2006): asked pps to solve easy and hard maths problems. Pps were given answers from 3 other (not real) students. Pps conformed (to wrong answers) more often when the problems were harder.  

  -- However, pps with high confidence in maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks

  -- Low internal validity: task and situation was artificial. Participants may have had demand characteristics as they knew it was a study.

  -- Limited application as it's based on American men and women may be more conformist. America is an individualist culture.