Asch's research into conformity

Question 1

What were the aims and procedures of Asch’s research?

Answer 1

Aim:
* Deceived participants to pretend they were doing a visual discrimination task
* Real aim was to see if people would go along with the majority if incorrect on an ambiguous task

Procedures:
* 123 male American undergraduates in groups of 6/7
* The real participant always sat 2nd to last, all but one were confederates
* Group shown lines and they all took turns to call out which line they thought was the same as the one presented
* Confederates all game the same incorrect answer 12 of the 18 trials
* Asch wanted to see whether the real participants would stick to what they thought to be right or cave in to pressure of the incorrect majority

Question 2

What were the findings and conclusions of Asch’s research?

Answer 2

Findings:
* Average conformity rate was 33%
* ¼ of participants never conformed
* ½ conformed on six or more of the trials
* 1/20 conformed on all 12
* Asch conducted a control condition, without the distraction of confederates giving wrong answers
* Mistakes were made 1% of the time

Post-research interviews:
* Found out that majority of conforming PPs continues privately to trust their own perceptions and judgements but changed public behaviour, in order to avoid disapproval

Conclusion:
* Motivation to conform was to avoid social rejection
* Conformed due to normative social influence
* Demonstrated compliance as, in one variation, they had to write an answer down instead of saying it out loud and conformity rates decreased greatly

Question 3

What were the 3 variables Asch tested?

Answer 3

• Group size
• Unanimity
• Task difficulty

Question 4

How did Asch test group size?

Answer 4

• Changed number of confederates
• Variations ranged from 1-15 confederates
• Conformity rate was same at 3 and 7 confederates (32%) therefore three is the optimal number

Question 5

How did Asch test unanimity?

Answer 5

• Changed unanimity of the group
• Asch included a confederate who was correct the entire time and conformity levels dropped from 33% to 5.5%
• Asch also the tested with a confederate that was instructed to give an answer different to the majority AND the correct answer (3rd choice), which dropped conformity to 9%

Question 6

How did Asch test difficulty?

Answer 6

• Changed the line length
• Made the incremental change much smaller to make the correct answer less obvious
• Conformity increased drastically

Question 7

What are the evaluations for the weaknesses of Asch’s study?

Answer 7

Child of its time example
* McCarthyism was a strong anti-communist period in America when people were scared to go against the majority and so were more likely to conform, which occurred at the same time as Asch’s research in the 1950s. The participants may have only confirmed due to their time period and no other reasons
* Further support for this idea is that Perrin and Spencer replicated this study in the 1980s and found near to zero levels of conformity
* Such research suggests that Asch’s findings are simply a product of that time in history

Cultural differences
* Research suggests that there are important cultural differences in conformity, and we might expect different results depending on the culture in which a study takes place
* Smith et al (2006) analysed results of Asch-type studies across a number of different cultures. Europe/US conformity was ~25% but in collectivist Africa/Asia/South America was ~37%
* This suggests culture has an impact on conformity rates, and collectivist cultures rely more on other people

Independent behaviour
* In Asch’s study, the conformity ate was 33%, meaning the participants agreed with the incorrect response on ⅓ of the trials
* However, this can be viewed to show independence as happening 67% of the time, meaning the majority did not conform
* This shows that Asch’s research demonstrated a tendency for participants to stick to what they believe in

Group size
* Bond (2005) stated that conformity studies have only used limited group sizes, as Asch concluded 3 confederates and many others copied this
* Bond points out that no studies other than Asch have used a majority size greater than 9, typically using 2-4
* This suggests we know very little about the effect of larger majority sizes