Conformity

Question 1

What is conformity?

Answer 1

A change in a persons behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group.

Question 2

What is group size?

Answer 2

Asch increased the size of the group by adding more confederates. Conformity increased with group size but only to a point

Question 3

What is unanimity?

Answer 3

The extent to which all members in a group agree.

Question 4

What is task difficulty?

Answer 4

• Aschs line judging task becomes more difficult when it becomes harder to work out the answer

Question 4

Explain Asch baseline procedure?

Answer 4

• Asch made a procedure where he wanted to see what extent people conformed to the opinion of others, even when the answer is certain.
• This is the baseline study

Question 4

Explain Asch baseline procedure?

Answer 4

• 123 American men were tested.
• Each participant saw two large cards. The x on the left is the original and the lines A,B,C are comparison. One of the comparison lines are clear and the participants had to say out loud which one it was
• They were tested in groups of 6-8 and only one was a genuine participant sat either last or second last. Others were confederates

Question 5

What were Asch’s findings?

Answer 5

• On average genuine participants agreed 36% of the time. 25% never gave the wrong answer

Question 6

Explain variables Investigated by Asch?

Answer 6

1) Group size: Varied size from 1-15. Curvilinear relationship. Conformity only increased up to a point. 3 confederates conformity rose to 31.8%.
Means most people are sensitive to views of others
2)Unanimity: Introduced a confederate who disagreed with other confederates. This made people act more independent Majority depends to an extent.
3) task difficulty: Wanted to see if making task harder will make people conform more. He made lines more similar and people conformed more due to ISI.

Question 7

Evaluate limitations of Asch experiment?

Answer 7

• Task and situation were artificial. Participants knew they were in a research study and could’ve done demand characteristics. Not real world situations

Question 8

Another limitation of Asch experiment?

Answer 8

• All participants were American men.
  People say woman may have conformed more because of invidualist culture.
• same research done in collectivist culture where conformity rates are higher. Meaning tells us little about culture and women

Question 9

One strength of Asch experiment?

Answer 9

• Support from other studies. Participants were asked to solve easy and hard maths problems . Participants gave answers from other students and conformed when task was more difficult.