Asch’s research

• Conformity is a change in behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined peer pressure from a group

  we conform to be liked or right
• asch’s baseline study

  123 male American volunteer undergraduate students

  Ppts were showed 3 lines of different lengths, and asked to state which was the same as the standard line.

  There was 7 people in each group, 6 of them being confederates, the confederates all said the same wrong answer.

  Asch was testing to see if participants would stick to the correct answer (obvious) or conform to the group.

  Findings - Average conformity rate was 36%, 25% never conformed 
• variable - group size

  conformity increased with group size, but only up to a point

  with 3 Confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 32% put the presence of more Confederate after this made little difference

  With one Confederate, it was 2.5% conformity.

  this suggests that people are sensitive to the views of others, because just one or two Confederate was enough to sway opinion
• variation - unanimity

  If unanimity is broken, conformity drops to 5-10%

  this suggests that the influence of the majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous, and that nonconformity is likely when cracks are perceived in the majority is unanimous view
• variation - task difficulty

  when the lines got more similar in length, making it harder to see the differences between line lengths, conformity increased

  this made it harder for the participant to know the correct answer so in these circumstances, it’s natural to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right.

  this is informational social influence
• One limitation of asch’s research is the task and situation were artificial

  The participants knew they were in a research study and may have simply gone along with what was expected, demand characteristics

  it lacks mundane realism, the task was relatively trivial, so it’s easier to conform (or not conform) as there is no prize and it’s a simple situation

  This makes it hard to generalise findings to real world situation, especially those were the consequences of conformity might be important
• another limitation of asch’s research is it’s limited application

  It’s participants were American men, so it lacks population validity and it’s not generalisable

  other research suggests woman may conform more as they are more concerned about social relationships and being accepted

  Conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures with social groups being more important than the individual, found that conformity rates are higher

  So findings can’t be applied to woman and people from other cultures
• a strength of Asch’s research is, there is research support

  Lucas asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems

  participants were given answers from 3 confederates, and they conformed more when the questions were harder

  however, Lucas suggested conformity is more complex than suggested. Participants with high confidence in maths abilities, conform to less on hard questions than those with low confidence.

  This shows that an individual level factor can influence conformity