SI: Variables affecting conformity

Question 1

What key study was this by and what year?

Answer 1

Asch (1956)

Question 2

What did Asch ask student volunteers to take part in?

Answer 2

A visual discrimination task, although, unbeknown to these volunteers, all but one of the participants were really confederates (colleagues of the investigator).

Question 3

What was the purpose of the study?

Answer 3

It was to see how the lone “real” participant would react to the behaviour of the confederates.

Question 4

What is the term the “Asch effect” used to describe ?

Answer 4

The very human tendancy for us sometimes to do as others do rather than what we feel is right.

Question 5

What did Asch show in his study?

Answer 5

People appeared to go against the compelling evidence of their senses in order to conform to a group consensus.

Question 6

Asch study- what is the procedure?

What was Asch interested in?

Answer 6

• In total- 123 male US undergraduates were tested.
• Participants were asked to look at three lines of different lengths.
• They took turns to call out which of the three lines they thought was the same length as the “standard” line- with the real participant always answering second to last.
• Althought there was always a fairly obvious solution to this task, on 12 of the 18 trials the confederates were instructed to give the same incorrect answer.
• ​Asch was interested in whether the real participants would stick to what they believed was right or cave in to the pressure of the majority and go along with its decision.

Question 7

How many trials out of the 18 were confederates instructed to give the same incorrect answer?

Answer 7

12 trials out of 18

Question 8

Findings

On the 12 critical trials, what was the average conformity rate?

Answer 8

The average conformity rate was 33%

(i.e. participants agreed with the incorrect response given by the other group members, on average, on one-third of the trials.

Question 9

Findings

How many participants never conformed on any of the critical trials?

Answer 9

1/4 of the participants

Question 10

Findings

How many of the participants conformed on 6 or more of the critical trials?

Answer 10

Half!

Question 11

Findings

How many participants conformed on all of the 12 critical trials?

Answer 11

1/20

Question 12

How did Asch confirm that the stimulus lines were unambiguous?

What did he find?

Answer 12

• He conducted a control condition without the distraction of the confederates giving the wrong answers.
• He found that participants made mistakes about 1% of the time, although this could not explain the relatively high levels of conformity in the main study.

Question 13

Findings

When Asch conducted a control condition- what percentage of the participants made mistakes?

Answer 13

1%

Question 14

Findings

When Asch interviewed the participants after, what did he discover?

Answer 14

• The majority of participants who conformed had continued privately to trust their own perceptions and judgements

HOWEVER

• They changed their public behaviour, giving incorrect answers to avoid disapproval from the other group members ( i.e. they showed compliance).

Question 15

Variables affecting conformity

What variations of the study did Asch take ?

Answer 15

• Group size.
• The unanimity of the majority.
• The difficulty of the task.

Question 16

Variables affecting conformity- Group size

• What did Asch find about conformity levels when the majority consisted of just one or two confederates?
• How did this change when the participant was under the pressure of a majority of 3 confederates?

Answer 16

• Little conformity when the majority consisted of just one or two confederates.
• When jumped to 3- the proportion of conforming responses jumped up to about 30%.

Question 17

Variables affecting conformity- Group size

What happened when there was further increases in the size of the majority after 3 confederates?

Answer 17

Further increases in the majority didn’t increase this level of conformity substantially, indicating that the size of the majority is important but only up to a point.

Question 18

• What did Campbell and Fairey (1989) suggest about group size?
• What happens when there is no objectively correct answer and the - e.g. music preferances?
• What happens when there is a correct response and the individual is concerned about being correct?

Answer 18

• Group size may have a different effect depending on the type of judgement being made and the motivation of the individual.
• The larger the majority- the more likely they are to be swayed.
• The views of just one or two others will usually be sufficient.

Question 19

The Unanimity of the majority

What happened when the real participant was given the support of either another real participant or a confederate - who had been instructed to give the right answers throughout?

Answer 19

Conformity levels dropped significantly- reducing the percentage of wrong answers from 33% to just 5.5%.

Question 20

The unanimity of the majority

What happened when the lone “dissenter” gave an answer that was both different from the majority and different from the true answer?

What did this lead Asch to conclude?

Answer 20

• In this condition, the conformity rates dropped to 9%, nearly as great a fall as when the dissenter provided support for the real participant by giving the same answer.
• Led to Asch concluding that it was breaking the groups unanimous position that was the major factor in conformity reduction.

Question 21

The difficulty of the task

What did Asch do in one variation?

What happened under these circumstances?

Answer 21

• Asch made the differences in the line lengths much smaller ( so that the correct answer was less obvious and the task much more difficult).
• Under these circumstances, the level of conformity increased.

Question 22

The difficulty of the task

What did Lucas et al. (2006) discover?

What happened when exposed to maths problems in an Asch- type task?

What differences does this show?

Answer 22

• The influence of task difficulty is moderated by the self-efficacy of the individual.
• High self efficacy participants (i.e. participants who were confident in their own abilities) remained more independent than low self- efficacy participants, even under conditions of high task difficulty.
• Situational differences (task difficulty) and individual differences (self-efficacy) are both important in determining conformity.

Question 23

What are discussion points for variables affecting conformity?

Answer 23

• Lacks external validity.
• Limited range of majority sizes.
• Unconcincing confederates.

Question 24

Write a PEEL paragraph discussing the ‘lack of external validity’ in variables affecting conformity:

Answer 24

P - Research took place in a period of US histor when conformity was more important.

E - At the time there was a strong anti-Communist period when people were scared to go against the majority and so more likely to conform.

E - Study repeated in 1980 in UK - initally only found one conforming results out of total of 396 trials where majority gave wrong answer. However, subsequent study showed youths on probation had similar levels of conformity as original Asch study when probation officers were confederates.

L - Confirmed that conformity is more likely if perceived costs of not conforming are high, which would have been the case in era in US and so the idea cannot always generalise.

Question 25

Write a PEEL paragraph discussing the **limited range of majority sizes:**

Answer 25

**P -** Bond (2005) suggested limitation of research in conformity is that studies have onlu used a limited range of majority sizes. **E -** Asch concluded that a majority of three was sufficient for maximal influence and therefore most subsequent studies using the Asch procedure have used three as the majority influence. **E -** Bond points out that no studies other than Asch have used a majority size greater than 9. **L -** Suggests that very little is known about the effect of larger majority sizes on conformity levels.

Question 26

# polarising glasses. Write a PEEL paragraph about the **unconvincing confederates** in Asch's study:

Answer 26

**P -** Some criticise Asch's study because it would have been difficult for Asch's confederates to act convincingly when giving the wrong answer - this would affect the validity of the study. **E -** Research (2010) overcame this issue by using a technique where participants wore glasses with special polarising filters. Three participants in each group worre identical glasses and the fourth wore a different set with a different filter. **E -** Meant that each participant viewed the same stimuli but one participant saw them differently, eliminating the aspect of confederates. For female participants (but not male) the results closely matched those in the original study. **L -** Supports the validity of the original findings, however suggests that it lacks population validity as can't generalise to males.