conformity

conformity

a change in a person's behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group

unanimity

the extent to which all members of a group agree

group size

the number of people, confederates or participants, within the test group

what was the aim of Asch's experiment into conformity?

to explore how people will conform to other peoples opinions even when the answer is clear

what was Asch's baseline experiment?

• 123 American men were shown a line X, then 3 other lines and were asked to state which line was the same length as line X (originally answer was clear)

• they were put in a group with 6 to 8 other confederates either last or next to last

• every confederate gave the same incorrect answer each time.

what were the findings of Asch’s baseline experiment?

• real participants agreed with the confederates incorrect answers 36.8% of the time

• 25% of the participants never conformed

Asch conformity experiment- variations in group size?

• Asch varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15

• conformity increases with group size up to 3 confederates, up to 3 conformity was 31.8% but there is little variation after

Asch conformity experiment- variations in unanimity?

• Asch told one confederate to disagree with the other confederates (dissenter), by giving the right answer or a different wrong one

• the participants conformity decreased to less than 25% when there was a dissenter as removing unanimity allows the participant to behave independently

Asch conformity experiment- variations in task difficulty?

• Asch increased difficulty by making line X more similar to A, B and C

• conformity increased with ambiguity as participants looked to confederates for the right answer- ISI

weaknesses of Asch's experiment- artificial situation and task

• Asch's experiment uses artificial tasks and situations, participants knew they were taking part in research so showed demand characteristics, task was trivial with no reason to conform

• Fiske (2014) argued groups weren't like real life groups

• means findings don't generalise to real world situations especially those where the consequences of conformity are important

weaknesses of Asch's experiment- limited application

• all participants were American men, Neto (1995) suggested women may conform more as they're more worried about social judgement and relationships

• Bond & Smith (1996) the US is an individualistic culture, higher conformity found in studies in collectivist cultures eg China

• means findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures

weaknesses of Asch's experiment- research contradiction

• conformity is more complex than Asch thought

• Lucas et al. (2006) study suggested conformity is related to confidence as participants who were confident at math conformed less on hard tasks

• shows that individual differences interact with situational factors and may influence conformity, Asch didn’t investigate individual factors

weaknesses of Asch's experiment- ethical issues

• naive participants were deceived as they thought the others were also participants, we gained insight into why people conform to avoid destructive conformity

• ethical costs should be weighed up against the benefits

• participants didn't give informed consent and may have had a negative experience but stress was minimal so may still argue research was justified as there are a range of potential applications

strength of Asch's experiment- research support

• Lucas et al. (2006) asked participants to solve ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ maths problems, they were given fake answers that claimed to be from 3 other students

• conformity increased with task difficulty as participants conformed more often when problems were harder, agreed more with wrong answers

• supports that task difficulty is a variable affecting conformity