Asch conformity study (1951)

• aim:


  investigate if participants will conform to majority influence - by giving incorrect answers where correct answers are obvious
• Design


  independent measures design - using different participants for each condition in the experiment
• sample


  volunteer sample
• Participants


  123 - male participants
• outline of study

  • One participant into a room with 7 confederates who all knew they were to choose the wrong answers
  • Shown 3 lines, A,B,C and one separate line that matches ABC line
  • Each participant did the experiment 18x - 2,214 trials all together
• Findings 


  1/3rd of participants conformed due to normative and informative social influences
• Participants to conform to all trials

  37%
• Participants to conform at least once

  75%
• example of informational social influence - quote


  "they must be right there are 4 of them and one of me"
• example of normative social influence - quote


  " I know they're wrong but why should I make waves"
• Limitation of Asch's research

  • The task and situation were artificial
  • Participants knew they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with what was expected (demand characteristics)
  • The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and therefore there was really no reason not to conform
  • Asch's groups were not very groupy, i.e. they did not really resemble groups that we experience in everyday life
• The findings of Asch's research

  Do not generalise to real-world situations, especially those where the consequences of conformity might be important
• Asch's participants


  • American men
• Women may be more conformist

  Possibly because they are concerned about social relationships and being accepted
• Individualist culture


  Where people are more concerned about themselves rather than their social group
• Collectivist culture


  Where the social group is more important than the individual
• Conformity rates are higher

  In collectivist cultures (such as China)
• Asch's findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures
• Asch's findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures (individualist/collectivist)
• Asch's research

  • One strength is support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty
• Todd Lucas et al. (2006) study


  • Participants were given answers from three other students (not actually real)
  • Participants conformed more often (i.e. 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