conformity

• conformity definition

  a change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people
• Asch's research

  aim: investiaget why people conform to the majority

  procedure: his 'baseline' study was to investigate the variables that may lead to an increase or decrease in conformity, 123 American male participants judged line lengths, confederates gave deliberately wrong answers

  naive participants conformed on 36.6% of trials and 25% never conformed
• Asch's research evaluation strength

  research support - Lucas(2006) -replicated the study for the effects of task difficulty with hard math problems proving that participants conform when the tasks become harder

  counterpoint - conformity is much more complex as Asch did not research the roles of individual variables, the participant variable of confidence
• Asch's variations


  -group size: varied in the size of the group where it ranged from 2-16, found that conformity increased with group size up to 3 and then levelled off

  -unanimity: placed a dissenter (confederate) in the group, conformity rate reduced

  -task difficulty: making the line lengths more similar made the rate of conformity increase as it became harder to be able to judge the lines
• Asch's research evaluation limitation

  cultural and gender bias as all participants were American men, other research (Neto) suggests that women are more likely to conform so the study may have a different outcome proving it unreliable

  
  

  low ecological validity as the study was artificial so participants could have just been doing what was expected of them, demand characteristics

  
  

  ethical issues as the participants were deceived, can this be allowed because it is required for the study and therefore more beneficial?