Asch

• Asch devised a procedure to assess how much people will conform to the opinion of others even in a situation where the answer is certain
• Asch's sample included 123 male US undergraduates (volunteer sample)
• All but one were confederates. One was a naive participant
• Asch showed participants two large white cards. On one card was a standard line and on the other, 3 comparison lines. The participant was asked which of the three lines matched the standard
• in 12 out of 18 trials, the confederates were told to say an incorrect answer
• Asch found 75% of participants conformed at least once
• when Asch interviewed participants afterwards, they said they conformed to avoid rejection (NSI)
• Asch was interested in the conditions that might lead to an increase or decrease in conformity so he carried out some variations of his original procedure such as group size, unanimity and task difficulty
• Asch increased the size of the majority up to 16 confederates.

  With 3 confederates, conformity rose to 31.8% but after 3, conformity rates stayed the same
• A dissenter reduced conformity levels
• Asch made the line-judging task more difficult by making the lines more similar in length and conformity increased (supports ISI)
• Asch’s research has been regarded as a ‘child of its time’
• Perrin and Spencer (1980) repeated Asch’s line study using engineering students in the UK. In this replication, they found only 1 student conformed out of 396 trials, which is not consistent with Asch’s findings. This may be because engineering students felt more confident about measuring lines than the original sample and so were less likely to conform
• the 1950s were an especially conformist time in America but society has changed with time. Therefore Asch's study lacks temporal validity
• A limitation was Asch’s methodology, including the artificial situation and task
• Asch's study was a laboratory study so participants knew they were in a research study and may have shown demand characteristics
• The task of lines was trivial and therefore there was no reason for participants not to conform
• The sample Asch used only males from America. The US has an individualist culture where social groups are less important. Studies done in collectivist cultures such as China have found higher conformity rates
• Neto (1995) found that women conformed more than men in a study of 1000 students
• There is also a possibility that some participants may have realised that all the other people in the room were confederates and thus felt free to give their own answer without fear of being ridiculed by others