Conformity Asch Research

Procedure

Solomon Asch (1951, 1955) tested conformity by showing participants two large white cards at a time. On one card was a 'standard line' and on the other card there were three

"comparison lines'. One of the three lines was the same length as the standard and the other two were always substantially different (i.e. clearly wrong). The participant was asked which of the three lines matched the standard

The participants in this study were 123 American male undergraduates. Each naive participant was tested individually with a group of between six and eight confederates, as shown in the diagram (below left). The naive participant was not aware that the others were confederates.

On the first few trials all the confederates gave the right answers but then they started making errors. All the confederates were instructed to give the same wrong answer.

Altogether each participant took part in 18 trials and on 12 'critical trials' the confederates gave the wrong answer. A trial was one occasion identifying the length of a standard line..

Findings

Findings

The naive participant gave a wrong answer 36.8% of the time. Overall 25% of the participants did not conform on any trials, which means that 75% conformed at least once. The term Asch effect has been used to describe this result - the extent to which participants conform even when the situation is unambiguous.

When participants were interviewed afterwards most said they conformed to avoid rejection (normative social influence).

Variations - Group size

He wanted to know whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group. Asch found that with three confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8% (see graph on facing page). But the addition of further confederates made little difference. This suggests that a small majority is not sufficient for influence to be exerted but, at the other extreme, there is no need for a majority of more than three.

Variations - Unanimity

Asch also wanted to know if the presence of another, non-conforming, person would affect the naive participant's conformity. To test this, he introduced a confederate who disagreed with the others - sometimes the new confederate gave the correct answer and sometimes he gave the wrong one.

The presence of a dissenting confederate meant that conformity was reduced by a quarter from the level it was when the majority was unanimous. The presence of a dissenter enabled the naive participant to behave more independently. This suggests that the influence of the majority depends to some extent on the group being unanimous.

Variations - Task Difficulty

Asch made the line-judging task more difficult by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar in length. He found that conformity increased under these conditions.

This suggests that informational social influence plays a greater role when the task becomes harder. This is because the situation is more ambiguous, so we are more likely to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and we are wrong.

Limitation - Low ecological validity

The study lacks ecological validity and mundane realism because the task and environment were highly artificial.

Psychologist Fiske (2014) noted that "Asch’s groups were not very groupy." In everyday life, we conform to people we know well and care about, where the consequences of conforming or standing out matter.

Limitation - Temporal Validity

The 1950s was an era where conformity to social norms was highly valued and dissent was actively discouraged. When Perrin and Spencer (1980) replicated Asch’s study in the UK using engineering students, they found only one conformist response out of 396 trials. They may have felt more confident but it also shows how the UK became more individualistic

Limitation - Biased Sample

Asch only tested American, male undergraduates. Asch’s sample was unrepresentative, making it difficult to generalize to the rest of the population

Limitation - Deception

Participants were deceived because they were told the study was about "visual perception," and they did not know the other people in the room were confederates. Because of this deception, they could not give fully informed consent.

Strength - High internal validity

high level of control over extraneous variables due to it being a lab study