asch - conformity research

• aimed to see if people would conform to the majority in situations where the answer was obvious
• 5-7 participants, 123 male americans tested in total
• participants given a standard line and 3 comparision lines and asked to match standard lines with the comparison line (obvious) but confederates gave wrong answers first
• only 1 real participant, remaining 6 were confederates who were told to give incorrect answers on 12 out of 18 trials
• real participants conformed on 32% of the trials where confederates gave wrong answers
• reasons for conformity

  • distortion of perception - participants came to see the lines in the same way as the majority did
• reasons of conformity

  • distortion of action - most participants thought privately but changed their public opinion for approval
• reasons for conformity

  • distortion of judgement - participants doubtful of own judgement
• X lacks ecological validity - is a lab experiment based on people's perception of lines and doesn't reflect real life
• X gender and cultural bias - used only american men and generalised results
• X deception and lack of informed consent - participants not told the true aim
• variation tested - group size

  conformity increases with the size of the majority, reaching its highest level with three confederates.
• variation -unanimity

  conformity decreases when there is support for the participant's belief or when the group's unanimous position is broken.
• variation - task difficulty


  conformity increases when the task becomes more difficult, possibly due to ISI