1. Asch’s research

• Asch's baseline procedure


  Procedure to access the to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others – even in a situation where the answer is certain
• Soloman Asch conducted the procedure


  1951
• Participants


  • 123 American male participants
• Groups


  • 6 - 8 participants, only one was the genuine (naïve) participant
• Procedure


  1. Each participant was given two pieces of white card

  2. One card with a line labelled - X

  3. The second card with three comparison lines (A, B, C)

  4. The participants would have to identify which one of the lines on the second card was the same length of X

  5. One of the three comparison lines was almost clearly equal to X – the other two were clearly wrong

  6. On each trail participants were asked to state out load which of the comparison lines was equal to X

  7. The genuine participant would answer last or second to last
• Baseline findings


  • The genuine participant would agree with the incorrect answer of the confederates – 36.8% of the time – 1/3rd of the time
  • 25% of participants never conformed
  • 5% conformed across all 18 trails
  • 75% conformed at least once
• Variables investigated by Asch

  • Group size
  • Unanimity
  • Task difficulty
• Group size


  1. Varied number of confederates from 1 - 15

  2. 1 confederate - real participant conformed on 3% of critical trails

  3. 2 confederates - real participant conformed 13%

  4. 3 confederates - conformity rose to 31.8%

  5. Presence of more confederates made little difference
• Unanimity


  • Introduced confederate who disagreed with other confederates
  • One variation gave correct answer, so the genuine participant conformity fell to 5%
  • Suggests that the dissenter freed the naïve participant to behave more independently - Was still true if the dissenter disagreed the genuine participant
• Task difficulty


  • Made it harder for participants to work out the correct answers
  • Conformity increased because the task became more ambiguous
  • Suggests Informational social influence – ISI
• Replication on British engineering students - 🙁  

  • 396 trails – only one student conformed  
  • Asch's study lacks temporal validity  
  • Done on a time of McCarthyism when conformity was more likely to take place  

  CP - Used a biased sample who were familiar with measurements   
• Artificial situation and task - 🙁  

  • Participants aware they were apart of research study - Demand charteristics  
  • Trails were trivial and no reason not to conform  
  • Did not resemble a task we saw ij everyday life  
  • Findings do not generalise to everyday life  
  • Can not generalise to real-world situations  
• Limited application - 🙁  

  • Only used male participants  
  • Other research suggests that women may be more conformist – more concerned with social relationships and being accepted  
  • USA individlistic culture – concerned more with themselves  
  • Similar studies in collectivist cultures have found higher conformity rates – Bond and Smith – 1996  
  • Asch's study tells us nothing about conformity in other cultures and women  
• Research support - 😊  

  • Lucas et al – 2006   
  • Asked participants to solve easy or hard math questions  
  • Participants were given answers from three other students  
  • When problems were harder, they were more likely to conform  
  • Asch was correct in claiming task difficulty influenced conformity  

  CP - Also found conformity was more complex than Asch suggested. Participants who had higher confidence in maths were less likely to conform.  

  • Shows individual level factor can influence conformity by interacting with other variables.