Factors affecting conformity

• Group size - Asch conducted variations of his conformity experiment with different numbers of confederates as the majority.
• Group size- He found that when there were only 2 confederates, conformity dropped from 37% to 14%, this suggests that small majorities are easier to resist than large ones. However, influence does not continue to increase if the number of members in the majority is increased
• Social support - In another variation, Asch asked one confederate to give the correct answer rather than the rest who had given the incorrect answer
• Social support- The participant having an ally broke the unanimity of the group, which in turn made conformity rates drop from 37% to 5.5%.
• Task difficulty 1 - When the task is made more difficult by making the lines more similar in length, the levels of conformity increase.
• Task difficulty 2- This is because people are more likely to conform if they are less confident that they are correct - due to the task being more ambiguous