Conformity Flashcards
(15 cards)
What is unanimity?
Extent to which all the members of the group agree.
What was Asch’s baseline procedure used to assess?
Extent people will conform to the opinion of others, even in a situation where the answer is certain.
What was Asch’s baseline procedure?
Standard and comparison lines each in a group with confederates.
Each participant shown 2 white cards on each trial.
One of the comparison lines was clearly the same length as X and other was clearly different.
Participants has to say out loud which one they chose.
What was the arrangements of the participants in Asch’s baseline procedure?
The real participant was always seated last
The real participant did not know the others were confederates
All gave same incorrect scripted answer each time
The situation was unambiguous (not challenging.
What were Asch’s findings?
Genuine participants agreed with confederates incorrect answers 36.8% of the time.
There were individual differences 25% of the participants never gave a wrong answer (never conformed)
What did Asch study around group size?
Wanted to know whether size of group would be more important than the agreement of the group.
Varied number of confederates for 1-15 (total group size 2-16).
Curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate.
What did Asch find about group size?
Conformity increased with group size but only up to a point.
Three confederates - conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%
Presence of more confederates made little difference, the conformity rate soon levelled off.
Suggesting most people are sensitive to the views of others because just one or two confederates was enough to sway opinion.
What did Asch study around unanimity?
If the presence of a non-conforming person would affect the naive participants conformity.
Introduced confederate who disagreed with other confederates.
One variation they gave correct answer
Another variation gave a wrong wrong
What did Asch find about unanimity?
The genuine participant confirmed less often in the presence of a dissenter.
The rate decreased to less than 1/4 of the level it was when the majority was unanimous.
Presence of dissenter freed participant to behave more independently.
Suggests influence of majority depends on it being unanimous.
Non conformity is more likely when cracks are perceived in the majorities unanimous view.
What did Asch study around task difficulty?
Whether making the task harder would affect the degree of conformity.
Increased difficulty of line judging task
Made stimulus line and comparison lines more similar to each other in length.
What did Asch find about task difficulty?
Conformity increased.
May be that situation is more ambiguous when task becomes harder.
Unclear to participants what the right answer is.
Informational social influence - Natural to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and you are wrong.
What is an evaluation point for Asch’s research?
Artificial situation and task
Task and situation were artificial
Participants knew they were in a research study.
Demand characteristics.
Trivial - no reason not to conform
Fiske
‘Not very groupy’
Did not resemble groups that we experience in everyday lives.
Findings do not generalise to real world situations, especially when consequences may be important.
What is an evaluation of Asch’s research?
Limited application
All American men
Other research suggest women may be more conformist
Neto
Possibly due to no concern about coil relationships and being accepted.
US - Individualist culture
Collectivist cultures have found conformity rates are higher.
Findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures.
What is an evaluation for Asch’s research?
Research support
Support for effects on task difficulty
Lucas et al
Asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems.
Given answers from three other students (not real)
Participants conformed more often when the problems were harder.
Showing Asch was correct in claiming task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity.
What is an evaluation of Asch’s research?
Counterpoint to Lucas et al’s study
Found conformity is more complex than Asch’s suggested.
Participants with high confidence in maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence.
Showing individual levels factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables
But he did not research the roles of individual factors
