Majority influence

• Define conformity

  Yielding to group pressure
• Conformity is a type of social influence involving change in belief or behaviour in order to be like the majority
• the aim of Asch's study - to see if participants would conform to majority social influence and give incorrect answers in a situation where the correct answers were obvious
• The method of Asch's study - 123 male american students were told they were taking part in a study of visual perception.

  Put in groups of 5 sat in a line

  participants looked at two cards: one showing one line, the other showed 3 lines different length

  the task was to call out which of the three was the same length

  accomplices gave unanimous wrong answer on 12/18 trials
• Evaluation- generalisability

  a weakness is that the findings cannot be generalised as Asch's sample only contained male students from the US
• Evaluation - reliability

  A strength is that it was a lab experiment where participants were studied in highly controlled conditions. Asch repeating his study many times showed reliability in his results
• Evaluation - application

  Results have important implications for real life situations

  E.g. How jurors decide whether an individual is guilty or not guilty in a court case. A minority view person may feel pressured to conform to majority view
• Evaluation - validity

  A problem with Asch's research into conformity is that the ecological validity of the study has been questioned as the study is artificial. Predicting lengths of lines in a lab is not the same as a real like conformity situation
• Evaluation - ethics

  Participants were not protected from harm - they suffered from stress but could be argued that the stress was short-lived
• Situational variables affecting conformity are group size, unanimity and task difficulty
• The results of Asch's study

  on the 12 critical trails: 32% conformity rate

  75% conformed to at least one wrong answer

  5% conformed to all 12 wrong answers
• Conclusion of Asch's study

  in unanimous situations, there may be strong group pressure to conform. There are individual differences in the amount of conformity.
• Asch found that increasing the group size increases conformity
• Asch found breaking the unanimity of the group decreases conformity.
• Asch found making the task harder increases conformity