Asch, Variables affecting conformity

• Confederates


  People who work for the experimenter and know what the experiment is really about, and have been told to respond in a certain way to manipulate the participant
• Ash's experiment


  1. Participants invited to take part in a visual perception task

  2. Participants sat in second-to-last chair at a table with other people (Confederates)

  3. Group shown two white cards - one with a standard line, one with three comparison lines

  4. On 12 out of 18 trials, Confederates gave the wrong answer
• Ash's experiment


  • It was an unambiguous task - the correct line was clearly visible
  • 32% of participants conformed and gave the wrong answer, compared to 0.04% in the control group
  • 75% of participants conformed at least once during the experiment
  • 5% of participants conformed every single time
• Group size variation


  • With 1 Confederate, 3% conformed
  • With 2 Confederates, 13% conformed
  • With 3 Confederates, 33% conformed
• Unanimity variation


  If there was another dissenter in the group, conformity dropped from 32% to 5.5%
• Task difficulty variation


  The more uncertain/difficult the task, the more conformity increased
• Replication by Perrin and Spencer in the 1980s found much lower conformity rates (only 1 out of 396 trials)
• Rosander's 2011 study on social media found conformity increased as task difficulty increased, supporting Ash's findings
• Ash's study only used male participants, so it's unclear if the results would apply to females
• Ash's task was quite unusual and not representative of everyday life situations, so the results may not generalize
• Participants may have been influenced by demand characteristics, where they felt pressure to behave in a way the experimenter wanted