Asch & variables affecting conformity

• Unanimity


  The extent to which all members of a group agree
• The pressure to conform is at its highest when the majority group are unanimous
• Asch gave the real participant a non-conformist ally who would sometimes give the correct answer or sometimes give a different incorrect answer to the majority

  The conformity rate dropped from 37% to 25%
• Group size


  Another variable thought to affect conformity
• Task difficulty


  A third variable thought to affect conformity
• If a situation is more difficult, a person is more likely to conform because they are less confident in their own opinion and therefore more likely to look to others to provide guidance on how to behave
• Conformity


  When a person changes their attitudes or behaviours due to real or imagined group pressures
• Types of conformity - Kelman (1958)


  • Compliance
  • Identification
  • Internalisation
• Aim – to test whether people would conform to group pressure, even if that meant giving a clearly wrong answer in a straightforward line judgement task
• Procedure:

  ·       123 American male students were shown a series of lines; the standard line and 3 comparison lines, one of which was the same length as the standard line

  ·       In each test, 7 males would be seated in front of the lines

  ·       All but one of the men were confederates so only one true participant was being tested at a time

  ·       Asch instructed the confederates to unanimously give the same incorrect answer on 12/18 of the trials (critical trials)

  ·       The true participant was always the last but one to answer.
• Findings:

  ·       overall conformity rate on critical trials of 37%.

  ·       5% conformed on every critical trial

  ·       25% remained completely independent, going against the majority and giving the correct answer on all 12 critical trials despite considerable group pressure.

  ·       In a control group of individually tested participants, they only gave incorrect answers in 1% of the trials
• Conclusion:

  His participants were showing compliance as the participants explained that one of the reasons they agreed with the majority on an obviously wrong answer was to avoid standing out from the crowd.
• In Asch’s original study, the confederates unanimously gave the incorrect answer. Asch explored what would happen if this was not the case. He gave the real participant a non-conformist ally who would sometimes give the correct answer or sometimes give a different incorrect answer to the majority. The presence of a non-conformist ally meant the conformity rate dropped from 37% to 25%.

  Asch concluded that when a group’s unanimity is broken, this is a major variable in reducing conformity.
• Asch manipulated this variable and found that when there was a small group giving the wrong answer of 1 or 2 confederates, the conformity rates were low.

  However, under pressure from 3 confederates, conformity rates increased to 32%.

  Further increases in size majority did not increase conformity a great deal and beyond 7 confederates, the conformity rate even began to decrease slightly.

  Asch concluded that the size of majority is important but only up to a point
• It is argued if a situation is more difficult, a person is more likely to conform because they are less confident in their own opinion and therefore more likely to look to others to provide guidance on how to behave.

  Asch tested this by making the line judgement task more difficult. When he made the standard and comparison lines more similar, he found that the conformity rate increased.
• a strength of Asch is It is a lab study meaning it was well controlled. The study made it easy to control extraneous variables. This is positive as the study measured what it intended to measure giving the findings high internal validity.
• a strength is Smith & Bond (1993) conducted a meta-analysis of 31 studies and found 2 key findings: Fiji and Belgium. Overall conformity rates on critical trials in Belgium was 14% and overall conformity rates on critical trials was 58% in Fiji
• a strength is Easy to replicate. The controlled lab setting made it easier to repeat the research in the exact same way, adjusting variables each time to test their influence on conformity. The study was standardised. This is positive as it allowed Asch’s research to test which variables affect conformity the most to gain a better understanding.
• a weakness is Asch did not fully adhere to the code of ethics. It was an unethical study as it involved deceit; participants believed it was a study of visual perception. This is a problem because he was not respecting his participants who had offered to take part in his research; however, deception was necessary to produce valid results.
• a weakness is The study has low ecological validity. In the experiment he used an artificial task to measure conformity – judging line lengths which is a task most people would not normally do in their everyday lives. This is a problem because the results cannot be generalised to other real life situations of conformity. If his study was done using a real life situation or task, he may have got different results.
• a weakness is the study lacks temporal validity. Conformity rate in 1950’s America will have been very different to what it would be nowadays. for example, Perrin & Spencer (1981) replicated Asch’s study 30 years later, with 33 male students who were studying engineering, chemistry or mathematics. The overall conformity rate was almost non-existent (0.25%) This is a problem because it could be argued Asch’s study lacks temporal validity.
• Limitation - andocentric. Low population validity as sample was 123 male students from America therefore it's biased. Findings from studies which are centred on men cannot be generalised to the whole population as no data has been obtained from female participants, we do not know if females would have conformed in a similar way. Asch assumed research results would apply to females (beta bias)