Research into conformity

• What is conformity?

  A change in a person's behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people
• Asch baseline study aims

  Asch (1951) devised a procedure to measure the extent that people conformed to the opinions of others, even in a situation when the other's answers was clearly wrong
• Asch baseline study findings

  Naive participants conformed 37% of the time, showing a high level of conformity when the situation is unambiguous. 75% of participants conformed at least once showing individual differences
• What were the three variables investigated by Asch

  Group size, Unanimity, Task difficulty
• Variable 1 procedure, findings, and explanation

  1. Asch varied the number of confederates in each group between 1 and 15
  2. The relationship between group size and level of conformity was curvilinear. If there were two confederates, conformity to the wrong answer was 14%. When there were three confederates, conformity rose to 32%. Adding more than three confederates made little difference
  3. People are very sensitive to opinions of other people because just one confederate was enough to sway opinions
• Variable 2 procedure, findings, and explanation

  1. Asch introduced a dissenting confederate who always disagreed with majority
  2. In the presence of a dissenter, conformity reduced on average to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous
  3. Having a dissenter enabled the naive participant to behave more independently
• Variable 3 procedure, findings, and explanation

  1. Asch made the the line-judgement task harder by making the stimulus line and comparison lines more similar in length
  2. Conformity increased
  3. 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. This is informational social influence
• Evaluation of research into conformity

  1. One limitation is that the situation and task were artificial
  2. Another limitation is that the findings have little application
  3. One strength is other evidence to support the findings
• One limitation is that the situation and task were artificial

  1. Participants knew they were in a research study, meaning there was demand characteristics. The task was trivial and there was no reason not to conform
• Another limitation is that Asch's findings have little application

  1. Only American men were tested by Asch. Neto (1955) suggested that women might be more conformist possibly because they are more concerned about social relationships
  2. Also, the US is an individualist culture and studies in collectivist cultures (e.g China) have found higher conformity rates
  3. This means that Asch's findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures
• One strength is evidence to support Asch's findings

  1. Lucas et al asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems. Participants were given answers that (falsely) claimed to be from three other students
  2. The participants conformed more often when the problems were harder
  3. This shows Asch was correct that task difficulty is one variable in affecting conformity
  4. Conformity is more complex than Asch thought. Lucas et al's study showed that conformity was related to confidence. This shows that individual differences interact with situational factors