Conformity

• Conformity-

  Asch 1955-

  • Investigated group sizes affect on conformity, varied the number of confederates used (2-16 in total), found a curvilinear relationship since they increased with each other (conformity became 31.8%).
  • Unanimity (non-conformer) so had someone disagree (right or wrong), conformity dropped to 5%.
  • Task difficulty so he made the line length task very complex (lines at a more similar length), finding conformity increase thinking its because the participants are unsure and therefore agree to not be left out.
• Conformity - Asch 1955-

  CPS- Lucas et al (2006) supported by testing with easy and hard math problems, conformed more when harder.

  CPW- Conformity is more complex to what Asch suggests (depended on the confidence of their maths abilities).
• Conformity- Asch 1955-

  CPS- Naïve participants were deceived since the others were part of the experiment.

  CPW- mind ethical costs.
• Conformity - Asch 1955- weaknesses

  • Artificial task, so they may have just gone along with whatever due to knowing it’s a test.
  • Groups didn’t resemble those in everyday life (Fiske 2014)
  • American men (can’t be generalised to other cultures and women (Bond and Smith 1996 and Neto 1995).