Asch's research

Question 1

Procedure pt.1

Answer 1

• Tested conformity by showing the participants 2 large white cards at a time. On one card was a ‘standard line’ and on the other card there were 3 ‘comparison lines’.
• One of the 3 lines was the same length as the standard and the other 2 were substantially different. The participant was asked which of the 3 lines match the standard one.

Question 2

Procedure pt.2

Answer 2

• The participants in this study were 123 American male undergraduates.
• Each naïve participant was tested individually with a group of between 6 and 8 confederates. The naïve participant was not aware that the others were confederates.

Question 3

Procedure pt.3

Answer 3

• On the first few trials all the confederates gave the right answers but then they started making errors. All the confederates were instructed to give the same wrong answer. Altogether each participant only took part in 18 trials and on 12 ‘critical trials’ the confederates gave the wrong answer.
• A trial was one occasion identifying the length of a standard line.

Question 4

Findings

Answer 4

• The naive participant gave the wrong answer 36.8% of the time. Overall 25% of the participants did not conform on any trials, which means that 75% conformed at least once. The term Asch effect has been used to describe this result- the extent to which participants conform, even when the situation is unambiguous.
• When participants were interviewed afterwards most said they conformed to avoid social rejection (normative social influence).

Question 5

Asch’s variations

Answer 5

• Asch was further interested in the conditions that might lead to an increase or decrease in conformity. He investigated these by carrying out some variations of his original procedure.

Question 6

1. Group size

Answer 6

• He wanted to know whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group. Asch found that with 3 confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%. But the addition of further conditions made little difference. This suggests that a small majority is not sufficient for influence to be exerted but, at the other extreme, there is no need for a majority of more than 3.

Question 7

2. Unanimity

Answer 7

• Asch also wanted to know if the presence of another, non-conforming person would affect the naïve participants conformity. To test this, he introduced a confederate who disagreed with the others- sometimes the new confederate gave the correct answer and sometimes he gave the wrong one.
• The presence of a dissenting confederate meant that conformity was reduced by a quarter from the level it was when the majority was unanimous. The presence of a dissenter enabled the naïve participant to behave more independently. This suggests that the influence of the majority depends to some extent on the group being unanimous.

Question 8

3. Task difficulty

Answer 8

• Asch made the line-judging task more difficult by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar in length. He found that conformity increased under these conditions.
• This suggests that informational social influence plays a greater role when the task becomes harder. This is because the situation is more ambiguous, so we are more likely to look to other people for guidance and to assume they are right and we are wrong.

Question 9

Evaluation- time

Answer 9

• Perrin and Spencer repeated Asch’s study with engineering students in the UK.
• Only one student conformed out of a total of 396 trials.
• It is possible that in the 1950’s (when Asch carried out his research) were an especially conformist time in America, and therefore made sense to conform to established social norms.
• But society has changed a great deal since, and people are potentially less conformist today.
• This is a limitation of Asch’s research because it means that the Asch effect is not consistent across situations and may not be consistent across time, and so is not a fundamental feature of human behaviour.

Question 10

Evaluation- artificial situation

Answer 10

• Participants know they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with the demands of the situation (demand characteristics).
• The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and therefore there was really no reason not to conform.
• This is a limitation because it means that the findings do not generalise to everyday situations. This is especially true where the consequences of conformity might be more important, and we interact with other people in groups in a much more direct way.

Question 11

Evaluation- limited application of findings

Answer 11

• Only men were tested by Asch. Other research suggests that women might be more conformist, possibly because they are more concerned about social relationships than men are.
• The men in Asch’s study were from the US (an individualist culture) i.e. where people are more concerned about themselves rather than their social group.
• Similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures (such as China where the social group is more important than the individual) have found that conformity rates are higher. This makes sense because such cultures are more oriented to group needs.
• This shows that conformity levels are sometimes even higher than Asch found. Asch’s findings may only apply to American men because he didn’t take gender and cultural differences into account.

Question 12

Evaluation- ethical issues

Answer 12

• The naïve participants were deceived because they thought the other people involved in the procedure (the confederates) were also genuine participants like themselves. However, it is worth bearing in mind that this ethical cost should be weighed up against the benefits gained from the study (cost-benefit analysis).