Asch's Line Study

• Asch: Group Size


  - When there were 3 confederates conformity rose to 32%

  - More confederates after 3 made no difference

  - This suggests a small minority is not enough for influence to occur but there is no need for a majority of more than three
• Asch: Unanimity


  - Presence of a non-conforming participant

  - Presence of dissenter meant conformity was reduced by a quarter from the level it was when the majority was unanimous

  - Dissenter enabled participant to behave more independently
• Asch: Task Difficulty


  - When the line judging task was made more difficult (lines more similar in length) , conformity increased.

  - This suggests that ISI plays a greater role when the task becomes harder, as the situation is more ambiguous.
• Asch A03: Lacks external validity

  - Asch's study was replicated with engineering students in the UK

  - Only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials

  - Engineering students were more confident about measuring lines than the original sample, so were less conformist.

  - 1950s were a very conformist time in America

  -Society has changed since then

  -Asch effect is not consistent across situations or time, so it lacks external validity
• Asch A03: Artificial situation and task 


  - PPs knew they were in a research study so may have responded to demand characteristics

  - The task was relatively trivial so there was no reason not to conform

  - Didn't resemble groups that we are part of in everyday life

  - This means that the findings do not generalise to everyday situations
• Asch A03: Limited application of findings


  - Asch only tested men

  -Other research suggests women may be more conformist because they're concerned about social relationships and being accepted than men

  - Asch studied an individualist culture (American)

  - Similar studies were conducted in collectivist cultures (eg. China), conformity rates were higher

  - This shows that Asch's findings may only apply to American men as he didn't take gender and cultural differences into account
• Asch A03: Findings only apply to certain situations


  - PPs had to answer out loud and were with a group of strangers which may have meant that they wanted to impress them so conformity rates were higher than usual

  - Conformity is actually higher when the majority of the group were friends rather than strangers
• Asch A03: Ethical issues

  • PPs were deceived because they thought the confederates were genuine PPs
  • However, it is worth bearing in mind that this ethical cost should be weighed up against the benefits gained from this study(cost benefit analysis)
• Asch's research procedure

  • Showed PPs 2 large white cards at a time, one card had a 'standard line', and the other one has three 'comparison lines'
  • One of the three lines was the same length as the standard and the other two were substantially different
  • Used 123 male American undergraduates
  • There was a group of between 6 and 8 confederates and PPs not aware they were confederates
  • All confederates gave same wrong answer
  • On 12 'critical trials' out of 18, confederates all gave wrong answer
• Asch's findings

  • Participants gave wrong answers 36.8% of time
  • 25% of PPs did not conform on any trials and 75% did at least once
  • When PPs were later interviewed they said they conformed to avoid rejection (normative social influence)
• Asch AO3: Research Support

  • One strength of Asch’s research is support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty
  • Lucas et al asked PPs to solve easy and hard maths problems
  • PPs were given answers from three other students (confederates)
  • PPs conformed more often when the problems were harder
  • Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is a variable that affects conformity