conformity

• conformity:


  a change in a person's behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people
• group size:


  asch increased the size of the group by adding more confederates, thus increasing the size of the majority. conformity increased with group size, but only up to a point, levelling off when the majority was greater than 3
• unanimity:


  the extent to which all the members of a group agree. in asch's studies, the majority was unanimous when all the confederates selected the same comparison line. this produced the greatest degree of conformity in the naive participants
• task difficulty:


  asch's line judging task is more difficult when it becomes harder to work out the correct answer. conformity increased because naive participants assume that the majority is more likely to be right
• asch's baseline procedure (1951):


  • sample: 123 american males
  • method: shown a standard line and 3 comparison lines, with one being obviously the same length as the standard line, participants had to say out loud which of the comparison lines was the same length as the standard line
  • physical arrangement: groups of 6 to 8, only 1 naive participant in a group, rest were unknown confederates, participant was always either second to last or last to answer, confederates gave the same incorrect answers each time
• asch's baseline findings:


  • on average, participants agreed with the confederates' incorrect answers 36.8% of the time
  • 25% of the participants never conformed
• asch's variations (1955); group size:


  • varied number of confederates from 1 to 15
  • found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate - conformity increased with group size up until a certain point
  • with 3 confederates, conformity increased to 31.8%, but the conformity rate soon levelled off as adding more confederates didn't significantly impact conformity
  • suggests most people are very sensitive to the views of others
• asch's variations (1955); unanimity:


  • introduced a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates (by either giving the correct answer or a different wrong answer)
  • genuine participants conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter
  • rate decreased to less than 1/4 of the level it was when the majority was unanimous
  • dissenter made the participant able to behave more independently
  • suggests that the influence if the majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous. non conformity is more likely when the majority isn't sharing an unanimous view
• asch's variations (1955); task difficulty:


  • increased the difficulty of the line judging task by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar to each other in length
  • made it harder for participants to see which answer is correct
  • conformity increased
  • by making the task more difficult it made the situation more ambiguous, making it more natural for the participant to look to others for guidance
  • participants assumed confederates were right and they were wrong (informational social influence)
• evaluating asch; artificial situation and task:


  limitation

  • participants knew they were in a research study so may have demonstrated demand characteristics
  • judging line length was a trivial task so there was no reason to not conform
  • fiske (2014) argues that 'asch's groups were not very groupy' meaning they don't resemble groups experienced in everyday life
  • therefore findings do not generalise to real world situations
  • especially to those where the consequences of conformity might be important
• evaluating asch; limited application:


  limitation

  • participants were only american men
  • other research [neto (1995)] suggests that women may be more conformist, possibly due to concern about social relationships and acceptance
  • the us is an individualist culture
  • conformity studies in collectivist cultures [bond and smith (1996)] have found that conformity rates are higher in these cultures
  • therefore asch's findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from other cultures
• evaluating asch; research support:


  strength

  • other studies support the idea of task difficulty affecting conformity
  • lucas (2006) asked participants to solve 'easy' and 'hard' maths problems and were given answers from other 'students'
  • participants conformed more often when they were given the 'hard' problems
  • therefore asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty affects conformity
• evaluating asch; research support:


  counterpoint

  • lucas' study found conformity is more complex than asch suggested
  • participants with high confidence in their maths ability conformed less than those with low confidence
  • therefore an individual level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables
• evaluating asch; ethical issues:


  extra

  • deceived the naive participants as they believed the confederates were also participants like them