Asch

• 50% of people gave the same wrong answer as the others on more than half of the trials
• Only 25% of participants refused to be swayed by the majority's false judgement on all of the 12 trials - 75% conformed at least once
• 5% always conformed with the majority incorrect opinion
• Over all the trials the average conformity rate was 33%
• Asch made an experiment with one real participant and rest of the people confederates who gave the wrong answer


  1. Showed the group a photo with lines on it

  2. Asked them to match the control line with the same one out of three

  3. Each person had to state aloud which line they thought was correct

  4. The confederates gave wrong answers in 12/18 trials which were the critical trials
• Normative social influence


  Public conformity, but not private conformity
• Conformity


  Genuinely believed they were wrong and wanted to be right
• Optimum group number


  • 3-5 people in majority group for max conformity
• Once unanimity is broken


  Conformity drops to 5%
• More difficulty


  More conformity
• Asch's research has limitations as there may have been demand characteristics present
• There was no consequences to conforming or not which means that it cannot be generalised to real life situations
• Most of Asch's participants were white, American, middle class men which could cause gender and cultural bias
• Asch's research is unethical as it deceived naïve participants as they did not realise the other participants were confederates
• Confederate


  People who were "in on" the study - fake participant who knows what's going on, actor
• Dissenter


  The naïve one
• Unanimous


  Everyone goes along with it
• Ambiguous


  Difficult to interpret right or wrong