Asch 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 (i.e. unambiguous)
Asch's baseline findings: on average the genuine PPs agreed with confederates' incorrect answers 36.8% of the time (i.e. they confomed about a third of the time)
Were there individual difference?
yes - 25% of PPs never gave a wrong answer (i.e. never conformed)
Group size?
Asch wanted to know whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group
How did Asch test group size?
varied the number of confederates from one to fifteen (total group size from 2 to 16)
What did Asch find? (GS)
Curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate. Conformity increased with group size, but only up to a point.
With three confederates?
Conformity rose to 31.8%. But the presence of more confederates made little difference - conformity rate soon levelled off which suggests that most people are very sensitive to the views of others because just one or two people was enough to sway opinion
