Conformity Studies

• asch (1955)- opinions & social pressure (support for normative social influence):

  • was interested in testing conformity to obviously incorrect answers. criticised research like Jenness' that only involved ambiguous tasks and uncertain situations.
• what was the aim of asch (1955)?

  • to investigate the degree to which individuals would conform to a majority who obviously gave wrong answers.
• what was the procedure of asch (1955)?

  • 123 american male student volunteers took part in what they were told was a study of visual perception.
  • individual p's placed in groups of between 7-9 sat in a line/around a table. other p's were pseudo-p's (confederates).
  • task: to say which comparison line, A, B, or C was the same as a stimulus line on 18 different trials. 12 were 'critical trials', where pseudo-p's gave identical wrong answers and native p's (real) always answered last or penultimate.
  • control group of 36 p's tested individually on 20 trials, to test how accurate individual judgements were.
• what were the findings of asch (1955)?

  • control group had an error rate of only 0.04%. 13 mistakes out of 720 trials, which shows how obvious the correct answers were.
  • on the 12 critical trials, there was a 32% conformity rate to wrong answers.
  • 75% of p's conformed to at least 1 wrong answer (25% never conformed).
  • 5% of p's conformed to all 12 wrong answers.
• more findings of asch (1955)?

  post-exp interviews found these reasons for conformity:

  • distortion of action- where the majority of p's who conformed did so publicly, but not privately, as they wished to avoid ridicule.
  • distortion of perception- where some p's believed their perception must actually be wrong and so conformed.
  • distortion of judgement- where some p's had doubts concerning the accuracy of their judgements and so conformed to the majority view.
• conclusions of asch (1955)?

  • the judgements of individuals are affected by majority opinions, even when the majority are obviously wrong.
  • big individual differences in amount to which people are affected by majority influence. as most p's conformed publicly, but not privately, suggests that they were motivated by normative social influence, where individuals conform to gain acceptance/avoid rejection by a group.
• strengths of asch (1955)?

  • asch's method for studying conformity became a paradigm, the accepted way of conducting conformity research.
• weaknesses of asch (1955)?

  • unrealistic situation, lacked mundane realism. would be unusual to be in a siutation where you would disagree so much w/others as to what was the 'correct' answer in a situation.
  • only 1 real p' tested at a time; procedure uneconomical & time-consuming. crutchfield (1954)- performed similar research , but improved procedure by testing several p's at once.
• more weaknesses of asch (1955)?

  • androcentric- male p's only, can't be generalised to whole pop., women might act differently in the same situation.
  • unethical- psychological stress, deceived about true aim of study, concerns about informed consent, right to withdraw; key ethical principles in psychological research.
  • not strong support for conformity- low rates, therefore influence of conformity was not universal and individual differences played a sig. role; correlational not causational.
• jenness (1932)- support for ISI:

  • ISI = informational social influence, when individual is unsure and/or lacks knowledge about what to do or how to behave in a specific situation. linked to internalisation.
• method of jenness (1932)?

  • asked p's to estimate the no. of beans contained in a jar.
  • p's then discussed their estimates in a group and then each p' made a 2nd independent estimate.
• findings of jenness (1932)?

  • showed that the 2nd estimate moved closer to the group estimate, indicating ISI, thus the theory has validity.
  • females conformed more, suggesting link in gender and conformity.
  • when people are unsure of how to behave/the answer they look to others for help, esp in ambiguous siutations.
• strengths of jenness (1932)?

  • influential, paved the way.
  • ethical in comparison to zimbardo (1973), milgram (1963).
• weaknesses of jenness (1932)?

  • lack of ecological validity
  • lack mundane realism
  • lacks pop. validity, p's were psych students who knew each other.
  • lack of control over extraneous variables.