Conformity and Aschs research.

• What did Asch design his baseline procedure to assess?

  To assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others, even in a situation where the answer is certain (i.e unambigious).
• Briefly describe Asch's baseline procedure?

  He tested 123 American men. Participants were asked to make judgements about lines and were asked which comparison line matched the standard line (they had to say these out loud). One of the comparison lines was always clearly the same as the standard line, the other lines were substantially different from the standard line and clearly wrong.

  There was one real participant in each trial, the rest were confederates, they were tested in groups of 6-8. The real participant was always seated last or second to last in the group. The confederates of Asch gave incorrect answers each time.
• What were the findings of Asch's baseline procedure?

  On average, the genuine participants agreed with confederates incorrect answers 37% of the time. 25% however, never conformed, giving the correct answer every trial.
• Asch extended his baseline study to investigate the variables that may lead to an increase or decrease in conformity, what were these variables investigated?

  Group size, unanimity and task difficulty.
• Describe Asch's group size variation?

  Asch wanted to know whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group. To test this he varied the number of confederates from one to 15.
• What did Asch find in his group size variation and what do these findings suggest?

  -Conformity increased with group size but only up until a point. With three confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%, however the presence of more confederates made little difference and the conformity rate levelled off.

  -This suggests that most people are very sensitive to the views of others as just one or two confederates was enough to sway opinion. As group size increases the pressures to conform also do.
• Describe Asch's unanimity variation?


  Asch wondered whether the presence of a non-conforming person would affect the naive participants conformity. He introduced a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates.
• What did Asch find in his unanimity variation? What do these findings suggest?

  The genuine participant conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter. The rate decreased to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous. The presence of a dissenter appeared to free the naive participant to behave more independently.

  This suggests that the influence of the majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous and that non-conformity is more likely when cracks are perceived in the majority's unanimous view.
• Describe Asch's task difficult variation?

  Asch wanted to know whether making the task harder would affect the degree of conformity. He increased the task difficult by making the standard line and the comparison lines more similar meaning it was harder for the genuine participants to see the difference between the lines.
• What did Asch find in the task difficulty variation? What did these findings suggest?

  Conformity increased. It may be that the situation is more ambiguous when the task becomes harder- it is unclear to the participants what the right answer is.

  -in these circumstances, it is natural to look to others for guidance and assume that they are right and you're wrong (informative social influence).
• AO3: what is a limitation with Asch's research being lab based?

  The task and situation were artificial so it was clear to the participants they were in a research study and so they may have simply just gone along with what was expected, ie demand characteristics. The task of identifying lines was fairly trivial and therefore there was no real reason not to conform; real life situations of conformity may be very different from this where the consequences of conformity might be important. This therefore reduces the ecological validity of Asch's research findings as they cannot be generalised to real world situations.
• AO3: what did Susan Fiske say about Asch's research (weakness)?

  According to Susan Fiske (2014) 'Asch's groups were not very groupy' ie they did not really resemble the groups that we experience in every day life.
• AO3: limited application. Why do Asch's findings tell us little about conformity and people from some cultures?

  All of his participants were American men. Other research suggests that women may be more conformist, possibly because they're so concerned about social relationships and being accepted. Furthermore, the US is an individualist culture (ie where people are more concerned about themselves then their social group). Similar conformity studies done in collectivist cultures (like China where the social group is more important than the individual) have found that conformity rates are higher. This means that Asch's findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures.
• AO3: research support. What research support does Asch's research have from other studies for the effects of task difficulty?

  Lucas et al asked their participants to solve 'easy' and 'hard' maths problems. Participants were given answers from three other students (not actually real). The participants conformed more often, ie agreed with the wrong answers, when the problems were harder. This shows Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity
• AO3: Counter point to Asch's research support- what else did Lucas et als study find about conformity?


  Lucas et als study found that conformity is more complex than Asch suggested. Participants with high confidence in their maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence. This shows that an individual-level factor can influence conformity by interacting with task difficulty. But Asch did not research the roles of individual factors.