2.ASCH RESEARCH

• Procedure


  1. Showing participants two large white cards at a time

  2. One card had a 'standard line' and the other had three 'comparison lines'

  3. Participant asked which of the three lines matched the standard

  4. Participants were 123 American male undergraduates

  5. Naïve participant tested individually with a group of 6-8 confederates

  6. Naïve participant not aware the others were confederates

  7. On first few trials confederates gave right answers, then started making errors

  8. Confederates instructed to give the same wrong answer

  9. Each participant took part in 18 trials, 12 'critical trials' had confederates giving wrong answer

  10. A trial was one occasion identifying the length of a standard line
• Group size


  Conformity to wrong answer rose to 31.8% with 3 confederates, but adding more made little difference
• Unanimity


  Presence of dissenting confederate reduced conformity by a quarter compared to unanimous majority
• Task difficulty


  Conformity increased when line-judging task made more difficult
• Informational social influence plays greater role when task is more ambiguous
• Asch


  Tested conformity by showing participants two large white cards
• Asch procedure


  1. On one card was the 'standard line' and on the other card there were three 'comparison lines'

  2. One of the three lines was the same as the standard and the other was completely different

  3. Participants were 123 American male undergraduate

  4. Each naive participant-with a group of six and eight confederates

  5. One of the first few trials, the confederate gave the right answer and then started giving incorrect answers

  6. Altogether there were 18 trials and 12 'critical trials' were given the wrong answer
• Conformity was 32% compared to 0.04% for a control group. With 75% of people conforming at least once and 5% conforming all 12 times
• Asch variations


  • Group size
  • Unanimity
  • Task difficulty
• Asch group size variation

  Asch increased the size of the group by adding more confederates. Asch found that with 3 confederates a conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%, but the addition of further confederates made little difference
• This suggests a small majority is not sufficient for influence to be exerted but, there is no need for a majority of more than 3
• Asch unanimity variation


  1. This is the extent to which all the members of a group agree. To test this, he introduced a confederate who disagreed with the others.

  2. The presence of a dissenting confederate meant that conformity was reduced by a quarter from the level it was when the majority was unanimous.

  3. The presence of a dissenter enabled the native participant to behave more independently
• This suggests that the influence of the majority depends to some extent on the group being unanimous
• Asch task difficulty variation


  Asch's line judging task is more difficult when it becomes harder to work out the correct answer. He found that conformity increased under these conditions
• This suggests that informational social influence plays a greater role when the task becomes harder. This is because the situation is more ambiguous, so more likely to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and we are wrong
• Asch study lacks temporal validity
• How Asch study lacks temporal validity


  1. Perrin and Spencer repeated Asch's original study with engineering students in the UK

  2. In a total of 396 trials only one student conformed

  3. Asch results could be explained by the time it was done. The study was done in the 1950s a time where people could of been more conformist, so made sense to conform to established social norms. But society has changed a great deal since then and people are possibly less conformist
• Temporal validity is a limitation of Asch research because it means that the Asch effect is not consistent across situations and may not be consistent across time and so is not a fundamental feature of human behaviour
• Research supporting Asch study

  • A study was conducted by Rosander who use Facebook, Twitter and other online communities to investigate task difficulty in conformity
  • Logic and general knowledge questions were posted for participants to answer
  • Online confederates provided wrong answer to half of the participants. Results showed participants conformed to wrong answers and an increase in conformity with more difficult questions
• This study demonstrates that Asch research is still relevant today, and even when not to face the desire to conform for NS reasons is still present
• Limitations of Asch study

  • The artificial situation and task
  • Participants knew they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with the demands of the situation [demand characteristics]
  • The task of identifying lines were relatively trivial and therefore there was no reason to conform
  • Also, despite being called a group, it didn't resemble a group that we are part of in everyday life
  • According to Fiske [2014]: 'Asch group was not very groupy'
• Ethical issues of Asch study

  • The naive participants were deceived because they thought the other people involved in the procedure [the confederates] were also genuine participants like themselves
  • However, it is worth bearing in mind that this ethical cost should be weighed up against the benefits gained from the study
• Limitations of Asch findings

  • The fact that participants had to answer out loud and were with a group of strangers who they wanted to impress might mean that conformity was higher than usual
  • On the other hand, Williams and Sogon [1984] found conformity was actually higher when the majority of the group were friends than when they were strangers
• Limited application of Asch findings

  • Only men were tested by Asch. Other research suggests that women might be more conformist, possibly because they are more concerned about social relationships [and being accepted] than men [Neto 1995]
  • The men in Asch's study were from the United States, an individualist culture
  • Similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures [such as China where the social group is more important than the individual] have found that conformity rates are higher. This makes sense because such cultures are more oriented to group needs [Bonds and Smith 1996]
• This shows that conformity levels are sometimes even higher than Asch found. Asch's findings may only apply to American men because he didn't take gender and cultural differences into account