Asch’s line study

• Asch's baseline procedure

  Procedure of Asch's original study to assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others, even in a situation where the answer is certain (i.e. unambiguous)
• Variables investigated by Asch

  • Group size
  • Unanimity
  • Task difficulty
• Group size

  1. Varied the number of confederates from one to 15 (so the total group size was from two to 16)

  2. Found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate

  3. Conformity increased with group size, but only up to a point

  4. With three confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%

  5. Presence of more confederates made little difference - the conformity rate soon levelled off
• Unanimity

  1. Introduced a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates

  2. Genuine participant conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter

  3. Rate decreased to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous

  4. Presence of a dissenter appeared to free the naïve participant to behave more independently
• Task difficulty

  1. Increased the difficulty of the line-judging task by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar in length

  2. Found that conformity increased

  3. Suggests the situation is more ambiguous when the task becomes harder, so participants look to others for guidance (informational social influence)