conformity

• Asch baseline procedure 


  Aims : Asch devised a procedure to measure the extent that people conformed to the opinion of others, even in a situation when the others' answers were clearly wrong.

  Findings : Asxch found that the naive participants conformed 37% of the time. This shows a high level of conformity when the situation is unambiguous. There were individual differences 25% of the participants never gave a wrong answer whereas 75% conformed at least once.
• Asch conducted further studies where he showed that certain variables lead to less or more conformity.

  The three variables were : group size, unanimity and task difficulty
• Group size

  Procedure : Asch varied the number of confederates in each group between 1 and 15

  Findings : the relationship between group size and level of conformity was curvilinear. If there were two confederates, conformity to the wrong answer was 14% but when there was three conformity rose to 32%. Above three confederates, conformity rate levelled off.

  Explanation : people are sensitive to opinions of other people as just one confederate was enough to sway opinion
• Unanimity

  Procedure : Asch introduced a dissenting confederate (sometimes gave the right and sometimes gave the wrong answer) but always disagreed with the majority

  Findings : in the presence of a dissenter, conformity reduced on average to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous. Conformity reduced if dissenter gave the right or wrong answer.

  Explanation : Having a dissenter enabled the naive participants to behave more more independantly.
• Task difficulty

  Procedure : Asch made the line judgement task harder by making the stimulus line and comparison lines more similar in length.

  Findings : conformity increased

  Explanation : the situation is more ambiguous, so we are more likely to look to others for guidance to assume they are right and we are wrong. This is informational social influence and it plays a greater role when the task becomes harder.
• Evaluation

  One limitationis that the situation and task was artificial. Participants knew they were in a research study (demand characteristics). The task was trivial and there was no reason not to conform. Also, Fiske argued 'Asch's groups were not very groupy'. This means the findings do not generalise to everyday life (especially in those situations where conformity is important).
• Evaluation

  One limitation is that Asch's findings have little application. Only american men were tested by Asch. Neto suggested that women may be more conformist, possibly because they are more concerned about social relationships. Also, the Us is an individualistic culture and studies in collectivist cultures have found higher conformity rates. This means Asch's findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures.
• Evaluation

  One limitation is ethical issues. Asch's research increased our knowledge of why people conform, which may help avoid mindless destructive conformity. But when participants are deceived they cannot give their informed consent to take part and may have a negative experience. Therefore, we may still argue that the research was justified as there are a wide range of potential applications and the stress caused was minimal.