Asch’s research (1951)

• Asch’s aim was to see if participants would yield to majority social influence and give it incorrect answers in a situation when the correct answers were always obvious
• Seven male, student ps looked at two cards: the test card showed one vertical line and the other card showed three vertical lines of different length. The ps‘ task was to call out, in turn, which of the three lines was the same length as the test line
• all participant, except one, were accomplices of the experimenter and the genuine ps called out his answer last but one
• Accomplices gave unanimous wrong answers on 12 of the 18 trials. These 12 trials were called the critical trials
• Participants conformed to the unanimous incorrect answer on 32% of the critical trials
• 74% of participants conformed at least once
• 26% of participants never conformed
• Participants often experienced tension and doubt but managed to resist the pressure exerted by the unanimous majority
• A lot of the conforming ps said that they couldn’t bear to be in a minority of one and risk being ridiculed or excluded by the group
• The majority of the conformed ps thought that their perception of the lines must be inaccurate and therefore they yielded to the majority view
• Asch concluded that people go along with the views of others for different reasons, some experienced normative social influence and felt compelled to accept the mistaken majority’s norm or standards of behaviour to avoid being rejected. Others experienced informational social influence and doubt their own judgments
• Ash found that there was very little conformity when the majority consisted of just one or two confederates. However, under the pressure of a majority of three confederates, the proportion of conforming responses jumped up to about 30%. Further increases in the size of the majority didn’t increase this level of conformity substantially which shows that the size of the majority is important to an extent
• In asch‘s original study, the confederates unanimously gave the same wrong answer. When the real participant was given the support of either another real participant or a confederate the levels of conformity dropped significantly from 33% to 5%
• In one variation, asch made the differences between the line lengths much smaller. Under these circumstances, the level of conformity increases
• Bond (2005) suggests a limitation of research in conformity is that studies have used only a limited range of majority sizes. Asch concluded that a majority size of three was a good size for maximal influence and therefore most subsequent studies using Asch’s procedure have used three as the majority size. This suggests that we know very little about the effect of larger majority sizes on conformity levels
• In two-thirds of asch’s trials the participants resolutely stuck to their original judgment despite being faced with an overwhelming majority expressing a totally different view. This shows that Asch’s study actually demonstrated a commendable tendency for ps to stick to what they believe to be correct
• One criticism of Asch’s study is that he did not use random sampling methods meaning his sample wasn’t representative of the population. He recruited students who volunteered to take part in his experiment. These volunteers would probably be more willing to conform than other members of the public