Asch's research into conformity + variables affecting it

• What is the aim of Asch's study?

  Asch (1951) aimed to test whether people would conform to group pressure
• What was the method of the study?]

  -Lab experiment

  -PPS were 8-10 male college students

  -6 confederates and 1 ppt in were asked to publicly match a stimulus line to a choice of three alternatives

  -The real pps was always seated and always answered near the end after most confederates had given their answer

  -Initially 6 control trials were conducted where confederates gave the correct answer. Then in 12 critical trials confederates were instructed give the incorrect answer unanimously

  -The pps's response to these trials were recorded
• What were the results of the study?

  -In the pilot study ppl were tested individually on the the lines the success rate was over 99%. Which shows the task was easy and the right answer was obvious.

  -Yet in the actual experiment 75% of pps conformed at least once and 5% conformed every time and the overall conformity rate was 32%

  -Asch's study showed a significant degree of conformity
• What was the conclusion of the study?

  -Asch's research suggests that people will conform due to Normative social influence (NSI), they conform for social approval, avoiding rejection or being seen as an outcast

  -There were some clear individual differences e.g. 25% never conformed at all and 5% conformed the whole time.
• What did Asch change in the study?

  Asch changed a number of conditions in his study to see if conformity levels went up, down or stayed the same
• What are the variables affecting conformity?

  -Group size

  -Unanimity

  -Task difficulty
• What is group size?

  Asch: Size of the Majority

  -There was little conformity when the majority was only one or two people.

  -However under the pressure of a majority of three conformity

  increased to 33%.

  -BUT further increases did not increase the levels of conformity.

  -This suggests that the presence of a small, unanimous group has a strong social pressure, but beyond a certain point, the group size doesn't proportionally increase this pressure.
• What is Unanimity?

  Asch: Unanimity of the Majority

  -Originally all the confederates gave the same wrong answer.

  -So Asch instructed one confederate to give the right answer.

  -Conformity dropped considerably. Falls to only 5.5%

  -This suggests that the presence of a dissenter provides social support
• What is Task difficulty?

  Asch: Difficulty of the task

  -Asch made the line lengths closer together and therefore the task harder.

  -He found conformity to the majority increased.

  -Asch argues that this is due to pps being more uncertain about their judgements, making them more susceptible to informational social influence(ISI)
• Evaluation - Temporal validity

  -Evidence against Asch comes from Perrin & Spencer (1981): -They found that when they repeated the Asch study in Britain many years later, only 1 person conformed in 396 trials.

  -It was concluded people don't always conform as much as Asch's original study suggested.

  -This is a problem as Asch's study may be seen as 'a child of its time'.

  -This could be said to be lacking temporal validity.
• Evaluation - Replicability

  -Another strength of Asch's research is that the study was easy to replicate:

  -This means that the controlled setting made it easier to repeat the research in exactly the same way, adjusting variables each time to test their influence on conformity.

  -For example, Asch was able to keep everything the same (standardised), but change variables such as the size of the group and the difficulty of the task.

  -This is positive as it allowed Asch's research to test which variables affect conformity the most to gain a better understanding.