Conformity

• AO1 - Asch’s aims

  • Asch came up with a procedure to measure the extent that people conformed to the opinion of others, even in a situation when the others’ answers were clearly wrong.
  • His study is a baseline study as it is the study which all the later studies are compared to.
• AO1 - procedure

  • In the baseline study, 123 American men were tested individually, sitting last or next-to-last in a group of 6-8 confederates.
  • Each participant was shown 2 cards, one with a standard line and the other with comparison lines.
  • One of the comparison lines was clearly the same length as the standard line, whilst the others was significantly different.
  • On each trial, the participant had to say which of the comparison lines was the same length as the standard line.
  • All the confederates gave incorrect scripted answers each time and the genuine participant didn’t know the others were fake participants.
• AO1 - findings

  • Asch found that the genuine participants conformed with the confederates’ incorrect answers 36.8% of the time, showing a high level of conformity when the situation is unknown.
  • 25% of participants never conformed.
• AO1 - group size variable

  • Asch varied the number of confederates in each group between 1-15.
  • Asch found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate.
  • With 2 confederates, conformity rate was 13.6%, but with 3 confederates conformity rose to 31.8%.
  • Suggests that people are very sensitive to others opinions as just a few confederates was enough to sway opinions.
• AO1 - unanimity variable

  • Asch introduced a dissenting confederate who in one variation they would give the correct answer and in another variation gave a different wrong answer.
  • In the presence of a dissenter, conformity reduced to less than a quarter of the level it was when majority was unanimous.
  • This was true even when the dissenter disagreed with the genuine participant.
  • Suggests that having a dissenter enables the genuine participant to behave more independently.
• AO1 - task difficulty variable

  • Asch made the task harder by making the standard line and the comparison lines more similar in length, thus it was difficult to see differences between the lines.
  • Asch found that conformity increased as it‘s unclear to the participants what the right answer is.
  • As the situation is more ambiguous, we are more likely to look at others for guidance and assume they are right.
  • This is informational social influence (ISI).
• AO3 - ✖️the situation and task were artificial.


  • Participants knew they were in a research study and may respond to demand characteristics.
  • The task was trivial and there was no reason not to conform.
  • Fiske argued ‘Asch’s groups were not very groupy’ (not like real-life groups).
  • Means the findings don‘t generalise to real-world situations.
• AO3 - ✖️findings have little application


  • Only American men were tested.
  • Neto suggested that women may be more likely to conform, as they are more concerned about social relationships and being accepted.
  • The US is an individualist culture. Bond and Smith conducted conformity studies in collectivist cultures like China and found that those cultures have higher conformity rates.
  • Means that Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women and other cultures.
• AO3 - ✔️other evidence to support Asch’s findings


  • Lucas et al asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems.
  • Participants were given answers that falsely claimed to be from 3 other students.
  • Participants conformed more often when the problems were harder.
  • Shows that Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable affecting conformity.
• AO3 - counterpoint; other evidence to support Asch’s findings

  • Lucas et al found that conformity is more complex.
  • Participants with high confidence in their maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence.
  • Shows that an individual-level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables, which Asch did not research.