conformity and variables affecting

• group size investigated by Asch: varied the number of confederates in each group between 1 and 5. The relationship between group size and lelvel of conformity was curvilinear. If there were 2 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer was 13.6%. When there were 3 confederates, conformity rose to 31.8%. Above 3 confederates, conformity levelled off. This is because people are very sensitive to opinions of other people as just one confederate was enough to sway opinion.
• unanimity investigated by Asch: introduces a confederate who sometimes gave the wrong and sometimes gave the correct answer but they always gave a different answer to majority. In presence of this confederate, conformity reduced to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous. Having this confederate enabled the naive participant to behave more independently
• task difficulty investigated by Asch: made the line judging task harder by making stimulus line and comparison lines more similar in length. Conformity increased as the situation is more ambiguous, so we are more likely to look to others for guidance and to assume they are right and we are wrong
• One limitation is that the situation and the task were artificial. Participants knew they were in a research study so this created demand characteristics. The task was trivial and there was no reason not to conform. Also, Fiske argued Asch’s groups were not ‘groupy’ as they were not like real life groups. This means the findings do not generalise to everyday life especially those situations where the consequences of conformity are important
• One strength is that there is evidence to support Asch’s findings. Lucas et al. asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems. Participants were given answers that falsely claimed to be from 3 other students. The participants conformed more often when the problems were harder. This shows that Asch was correct that task difficulty is one variable affecting conformity.
• Counterpoint to evidence to support Asch’s findings. Conformity is more complex than Asch thought. Lucas et al. study showed that conformity was related to confidence as high confidence equals less conformity. This shows that individual level factors interact with situational ones. But Asch didn't investigate individual factors