conformity-asch(ao1)

• 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 three
• 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 involved American male participants being tested, each one in a group with other participants
• The participants had to say out loud which of the comparison lines was the same length as the standard line X
• Only one participant was the genuine participant, the others were confederates of Asch who gave the same (incorrect) scripted answers each time
• On average, the naive participants agreed with the confederates' incorrect answers 25% of the time
• About a third of the participants never gave a wrong answer, conforming 0% of the time</b>
• Asch extended his baseline study to investigate the variables that might lead to an increase or a decrease in conformity
• The variables investigated were group size, unanimity, and task difficulty