Research into conformity

What was Asch’s aim?

Asch (1951) aimed to explore whether people conform to a group even when they  know they are wrong, an unambiguous task. And to advance knowledge in the area  by discovering information about the power of the majority. 

What was Asch’s procedure?

• Asch used 123 male (undergraduates) participants in the study

• The task involved asking  participants to estimate which of three comparison lines was the same length as a target line

• However not all the participants were ‘real’ participants, they were confederates, only one participant was real

• The participants were tested in groups of 7-9. The real participants were positioned either last or second to last to answer

• The study began with two trials, where the confederates answered correctly, this was called a neutral trial

• On the next trial the confederates gave an incorrect answer deliberately, this was called a critical trial

• In total there were 18 trials, this was made up of 12 critical and 6 neutral trials.

  
  

What were the findings of Asch’s research?

• 33% was the Conformity rate

• This means that the real participants  agreed with the incorrect answer given by the confederates on approx. one third of trials.

• Some individual differences were discovered

• Asch reported one quarter didn't conform on any of the critical trials while around half conformed on 6 or more trials, and one in 20 conformed on all of the 12 critical trials

• Asch confirmed that the task was unambiguous by conducting a control condition with no fake participants

• The results of this were that participants made mistakes on about 1% of trials. When he interviewed his participants after the experiment the majority of participants who reported conforming continued to privately trust their own perceptions and judgements but changed their public behaviour.

The results suggest that because the answers were obvious, Asch’s study shows the impact of the majority. However, the majority doesn’t always have the same impact on every individual.   

Limitation: Artificial Nature of Study

P - A limitation of Asch’s research is that the task and situation were artificial.

E - Participants knew they were in a study and may have gone along with what was expected, demonstrating demand characteristics. The task (identifying lines) was relatively trivial and there was no reason for them not to conform.

E - As the task was artificial, and the participants may have demonstrated demand characteristics, this reduces the validity (both internal and external) of the study.

L - Therefore, the findings of this study cannot be generalised to real-world situations and cannot provide us with a coherent understanding of conformity in real-life situations.

Limitation: Culture Bias

• Smith et al (2006) analysed results of Asch type studies across a number of different cultures

• The average conformity was 31.2%, but differences were found between different cultures

• In individualist cultures the average conformity rate was 25% whereas collectivist cultures the average conformity rate was 37%