Conformity Asch's research Flashcards
What is conformity?
A change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people
What is Asch’s baseline procedure?
Asch devised a procedure to assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others, even in a situation where the answer is certain
How does group size affect conformity?
Asch wanted to know whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group. To test this he varied the number of confederates from 1-15. Asch found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rates.
Conformity increased with group size but only up to a point. With 3 confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8 % . But the presence of more confederates made little difference - the conformity rate soon levelled off.
This suggests that most people are very sensitive to the views of others because just one or two confederates was enough to sway the opinion.
How does unanimity affect conformity?
Asch wondered if the presence of a non conforming person would affect the naive participant’s conformity. He introduced confederates who disagreed with the other confederates. In one variation of the study this person gave the correct answer and in another variation he gave the wrong answer. The genuine participants conformed less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous. The presence of a disaster appeared to free the naive participants to behave more interdependent. This was true when even the disaster disagreed with the genuine participant. This suggests that the influence of the majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous. And that non-conformity is more likely when cracks are perceived in the majority’s unanimous view.
How does task difficultly affect conformity?
Asch wanted to know whether making the task harder would affect the degree of conformity. He increased task difficulty of the line-judging task by making the stimulus line and the comparison line more similar to each other in length. This meant it became harder for the genuine participants to see the differences between the lines. Asch found that conformity increased. It may be that the situation is more ambiguous when the task becomes harder- it is unclear to the participants what the right answer is. In theses circumstances it is natural to look at other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and you are wrong.
Why is artificial situation and task a limitation of Asch’s research?
One limitation of Asch’s research is that the task and situation were artificial.
Participants knew they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with what was expected (demand characteristics) The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and therefore there was really no resin not to conform. Also according to Fiske Asch’s groups were no very groupy i.e they did not resemble groups that we experience in everyday life . This means the findings do not generalise to real world situations especially those where the consequences of conformity might be important.
Why is limited application a limitation of Asch’s study?
Another limitation is that Asch’s participants were American men. Other research suggests that women may be more conformist possibly because they are concerned about social relationships and being accepted. Further more the USA is an individualist culture where people are more concerned about themselves rather than their social groups. Similarly conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures such as China where the social group is more important than the individual and have found that conformity rates are higher ( Bond and Smith) This means that Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures.
Why is research support a strength of Asch’s research?
One strength of Asch’s research is support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty. For example Todd Lucas er al asked their participants to solve easy and hard maths problems. Participants were given answers from three other students. The participants conformed more often when the problems were harder. This shows Asch’s was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity.
What is a counterpoint for that?
However Lucas at al’s study found that conformity is more complex than Asch’s suggested. Participants with high confidence in their maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence. This shows that an individual level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables eg task difficulty. But Asch did not research the roles of individual factors.
