Social Influence - Conformity: Asch's research Flashcards
Who took part in the study?
123 Male american undergraduates
What was the procedure for Asch’s research?
Procedure:
- Participants were tested in groups of 6 to 8
- Each group was presented with a standard
line and three comparison lines
-Participants had to say aloud which comparison line matched the standard line in length
-In each group there was only one genuine (naive) participant the remaining were confederates
-The genuine participant was seated second to last and did not know the other participants were fake participants
-The fake confederate participants all gave the same incorrect answer
Confederates were told to give the incorrect answer on 12 out of 18 trails
How many critical trials were there?
There were 12 critical trials
What were the findings of Asch’s research?
Findings
- The naive participants agreed with the confederates’ incorrect answers 36.8% of the time:
- 75% of the sample conformed to the majority on at least one trial
-25% of participants never gave a wrong answer, which shows there were individual differences
What are the % of times the naive participants give the wrong answer?
36.8%
What is the % of people who conformed at least once?
75%
What is the % of people who conformed did not conform?
25%
Define the asch effect?
The extent which participants conform even when the situation is unambiguous
What was the result of group size variation?
A small majority isn’t sufficient for influence. Also any more than 3 confederates is needed for influence to be exerted
Did conformity levels increase or decrease with unanimity ? Also what is the % ?
The presence of a dissenter decreased conformity by 25%
What does task difficulty variation results suggest?
The more difficult the task, the more people conform
Research support- Lucas et al 2006
One strength of Asch’s research is it has been supported by other studies
Lucas et al (2006) asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems and found participants conformed to the wrong answer more often when the problems were hard
This supports Asch’s claim that task difficulty is one variable that effects conformity
Limitation of Asch Research - Limited application
One limitation, Asch’s participants were all men from the USA
Other research has suggested that women may be more conformist due to their concern with social relationships
The USA is an individualist culture (where people are concerned with themselves as the individual more so than in collectivist cultures where they are concerned with their social groups)
Findings tell us little about how women or those from other cultures may confirm
Limitation- Child of its time
Another limitation of Asch research is Perrin and Spencer (1980) who repeated Asch’s study with engineering students in the UK.
They found only one person conformed in a total of 396 trials.
This means that the Asch effect is not consistent across situations and may not be consistent across time. Therefore its not a fundamental feature of human behaviour
