Asch

• Conformity

  =a change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure form a person or a group.
• Asch’s research

  =to assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others, even when the answer is unambiguous.

  baseline study= is the one against which all the later studies are compared.
• Variables used to investigate what might lead to an increase or decrease in conformity 


  Group size

  unanimity

  task difficulty
• Group size 


  = varied the number of confederates from 1-15.

  • found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate.
  • conformity increased with group size but only up to a point
  • 3 confederates = 31.8% conformity to wrong answer, but presence of more confederates made little difference
  • suggests most people are sensitive to views of others just 1/2 confederates was enough to sway opinion
• Unanimity

  =would presence of a non-conforming person affect participant.

  Introduced a confederate who disagreed with other confederates.

  • genuine participant conformed less often in presence of a dissenter.
  • rate decreased to less than 1/4
  • presence of a dissenter appeared to free the participant to to behave more independently, true even when dissenter disagreed with participant.
  • suggests influence of the majority depends on it being unanimous. Non-conformity more likely when cracks are perceived in majority’s unanimous view.
• Task difficulty 


  =would making the task harder affect the degree of conformity.

  increased difficulty by making comparison and stimulus line more similar to each other in length. Harder for participants to see difference

  • conformity increased- situation is more ambiguous when task becomes harder
  • it’s unclear to participant what the right answer is so it’s natural to look to other people for guidance and assume they are right= informational social influence
• Evaluation- artificial situation and task

  Limitation= participant knew they were in a research study and may have gone along with what was expected (demand characteristic)

  • task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and therefore there is no real reason not to conform
  • groups did not resemble groups in everyday life
  • so can‘t generalise findings to real world situations
• evaluation- limited application 


  Limitation= participants were all American men

  -other research suggests women may be more conformist, may be concerned about social relationships and being accepted.

  -USA is an individualist culture.

  -conformity studies in collectivist cultures have found conformity rates are higher

  • so findings tell us little about conformity in women and other cultures
• Evaluation- research support

  Lucas et al Asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems. Participants given answers from 3 confederates.

  • participants conformed more when problems were harder
  • Asch correct in claiming task difficulty affects conformity
• Evaluation- counter point

  Lucas et al study found that conformity is more complex than Asch suggested.

  • participants with higher confidence in maths conformed less on hard task than those with low confidence.
  • shows than an individual level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables