trial

• Group size


  Asch wanted to know whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group
• Asch's baseline procedure


  Soloman Asch (1952) devised a procedure to assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others, even in a situation where the answer is certain and unambiguous
• Variables investigated by Asch


  • Group size
  • Unanimity
  • Task difficulty
• Asch's group size investigation


  1. Varied the number of confederates from one to 15 (so the total group size was from two to 16)

  2. Found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate

  3. Conformity increased with group size, but only up to a point

  4. With three confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%

  5. The presence of more confederates made little difference - the conformity rate soon levelled off
• Group size and conformity


  Most people are very sensitive to the views of others because just one or two confederates was enough to sway opinion
• Asch's unanimity investigation


  1. Introduced a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates

  2. The genuine participant conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter

  3. The rate decreased to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous

  4. The presence of a dissenter appeared to free the naive participant to behave more independently
• Unanimity and conformity


  • The influence of the majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous
  • Non-conformity is more likely when cracks are perceived in the majority's unanimous view
• Asch's task difficulty investigation


  1. Increased the difficulty of the line-judging task by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar in length

  2. Conformity increased

  3. The situation is more ambiguous when the task becomes harder - it is unclear to the participants what the right answer is

  4. In these circumstances, it is natural to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and you are wrong (this is called informational social influence (ISI))