Conformity: Asch's Study

• Aim


  To investigate the degree to which individuals would conform to the majority who gave unambiguously wrong answers.
• Asch's study supports compliance to an unambiguous situation. The explanation is Normative Social Influence.
• Procedure


  123 male American undergraduates. Tested in a group of confederates, each asked to state which of the three comparison lines was the same as the standard line. The confederates were told to give the same incorrect answer on 12 critical trials out of 18. The participant was always the penultimate or last one to answer.
• Findings


  On the critical trials, 32% conformed to the wrong answer.

  75% conformed at least once.

  Asch interviewed participants afterwards, most said that they knew the answer was wrong but said the wrong answer to fit in or thought they would've been ridiculed otherwise.
• Conclusion


  Participants conformed to gain acceptance from the group and avoid rejection. They complied and were driven by a desire to fit in due to NSI.
• Variations: Group size


  With a majority of 3, conformity started to rise. However, adding more to the group made very little difference to how many would conform. This suggests that group size beyond 3 has little effect on conformity.

  1: ppts conformed 3%

  2: ppts conformed 12%

  3: ppts conformed 32%
• Variations: Task difficulty

  Asch could've made the task more difficult by adding more comparison lines or making it less clear which one was the same as the standard line. Conformity would have increased as ppts would've been motivated by a need to be right due to ISI. (Internalisation).
• Variations: Unanimity

  When adding another non-conformist, conformity went down 25% because it breaks the unanimity, there's less pressure from the group. The non-conformist could give the right or wrong answer and pressure to conform is still weakened.
• The time of the study (a child of its time)

  McCarthyism exerted a strong influence during the time of the study which means that there was a lot of historical bias. In research by Perrin and Spencer, ppts admitted that they thought they would've been ridiculed for conforming whilst in Asch's study, they thought they would've been ridiculed for not conforming. P&S refuted Asch's study. This suggests that Asch's study lacks temporal validity due to high levels of historical bias at the time of the study. Therefore Asch's study doesn't explain conformity in modern society.
• Conformity is not stable/fixed behaviour

  Conformity differs across cultures (Collectivist vs Individualistic) which means its difficult to generalise findings across different cultures. In research by Smith et al, it was found that average conformity rates were 25% in individualistic cultures compared 37% in collectivist cultures. Therefore Asch's research may only be useful in explaining conformity in collectivist cultures as he used American undergraduates.
• Task and situation have little resemblance to conformity in real life.

  The tasks completed meant that the study lacked ecological validity. The tasks were trivial and we rarely have to make decisions amongst total strangers. Conformity normally takes place with people we know and as well as this, there's no consequence to conforming in the study. Therefore, we cannot generalise findings to real life settings so results have limited application.
• There are ethical issues with research


  Participants were not protected from psychological stress which may have occurred if they disagreed with the group. For example, in research by Beck et al, it was found that participants in the Asch situation had greatly increased autonomic arousal. Participants were also deceived, they thought it was a vision test when the real purpose was to se how 'naïve' they were.