Social influence (conformity)

• 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


  1. Standard and comparison lines presented

  2. Participants tested in groups of 6-8

  3. Only one genuine (naive) participant

  4. Others were all confederates giving scripted incorrect answers
• On average, the genuine participants agreed with confederates' incorrect answers 36.8% of the time (they conformed about a third of the time)
• 25% of the participants never gave a wrong answer (never conformed)
• Task difficulty increased


  Conformity increased
• The physical arrangement of the participants in the study


  • The naïve (genuine) participant was always seated either last or (as here) next to last in the group
  • Participants gave their answers out loud, one at a time, beginning with the 1st person
• Some students may simply have gone along with the group because they are more conformist, possibly because they are more concerned about relationships (and being accepted) than men are
• Asch's study were from the United States, an individualistic culture where people are more concerned about themselves rather than the group
• Similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures where the social group is more important than the individual show higher conformity rates
• Conformity levels are sometimes even higher than Asch's findings
• Asch's findings may only apply to American men and do not take gender and cultural differences into account