the Variables affecting conformity

ambigious

= open to more than one interpretation

confederate

= participants who are taking part in a study but are not being studied by the researcher

ASCH's experiment (1951)

... devised a class experiment in social psychology whereby there was an obvious answer to a line judgment task

if participants gave incorrect answer

= due to group pressure

Aim of Asch's experiment

to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform

naive/genuine participant

= person being studied

Method

50 male students from Swarthmore college in the USA participated in a "vision test"

- used a line judgement task

- Asch put naive participant in room with 7 confederates

confederates had agreed in advance their responses to task

- genuine participant did not know this and was led to believe they were 6 other genuine participants

- each persons stated aloud which line was most like target line (A,BorC

Genuine participant sat second last or last

- 18 trials in total, confederates gave obvious wing answer of 12 trials (critical trails)

- control condition with no confederates and only genuine participants

Results

Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view

- on average, 32% of participants who placed in this situation went along and conformed with clearly incorrect majority in critical trials

- over the 12 critical trials, 75% of participants conformed at least once

- only 25% never conformed

in control group... no pressure to conform and less than 1% of participants gave wrong answer

(demonstrates unambiguity of task)

Conclusion of Asch's study

when interviews after experiment, most of genuine participants said they didn't really believe in their conforming answers but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed

= NSI, compliance

a few said they really believed that the groups answers were correct

= ISI, identification

Asch's variations

research into conditions that might lead to an increase/decrease in conformity

3 variations...

1. group size

2. unanimity of majority

3. difficulty of task

1. group size

with 3 confederates, conforming to wrong answer rose to 31.8%

= suggests that a small majority isn't sufficient enough for influence to be exerted but that there is no need for a majority of more than 3

3 or more confederates are needed

2. unanimity of majority

introduced another confederate who sometimes gave the wrong answer and sometimes gave the right answer

= new dissenting confederate meant conformity was reduced by a 1/4 from level it was when majority was unanimous

Presence of dissenter enabled naive participant to behave more independently as they were allies

... suggests that the influence of majority depends to some extent on group being unanimous

Difficulty of task

if task is more difficult and answer is less obvious, conformity increases

suggests that ISI plays greater role when task become harder

--> situation becomes MORE AMBIGUOUS

... people look to other for guidance

AO3 - STRENGTH: high levels of control

P

= a strength of Asch's study is that he had high levels of control over the variables involved

EV

= Asch was able to control; what the confederates did and said, how many people were in the room, and the ambiguity of the task

EX

= these high levels of control meant that this study had high internal validity and was repeatable, meaning the findings from the 18 trials were reliable as the results were consistent

C

= however, Asch's study had many ethical issues that it can be criticised for. The participants were deceived from the true nature of the study as they were told it was a "vision test", and the participants were not protected from psychological harm. Evidence suggested that the participants in the study suffered from increased level of autonomical arousal and were stressed during the test.

LB

= despite this, the deception of the participants was necessary to produce valid results and the high control that Asch has over the experiment suggests that the findings are reliable

A03 - WEAKNESS: temporal validity

P

= one weakness of Asch's study is that it lacks temporal validity

EX

= some critics believe that the high levels of conformity found by Asch were a reflection of conservative anti-communist 1950's America and told us more about the cultural climate of the USA in the 50's than it did about conformity

EV

= for example, Perin and Spencer (1980's) suggested that Asch's study was a "child of its time" and carried out an exact replication of the original Asch experiment using engineering a math students. They found that on only 1 out of 396 trials did a participant conform

C

= however, it could also be argued that Perin and Spencer's sample was biased as the students were likely to have similar IQs or dispositions, and therefore the findings only reflect this very small sample

LB

= although this is true, the findings of the Asch's study should not be generalised to modern society as the experiment is temporally bound and does not reflect the conformity of the population, which decreases the validity as a result.

A03 - WEAKNESS: artificial

P

= the study used an artificial task and setting to measure conformity

EV

= the participants wee asked to judge which line matched the length of the exam.e line, in a room with 7 or 8 other people who were also participating in a "vision test"

EX

= this is an unlikely task that we wouldn't be presented in everyday life and the task itself could be deemed trivial, which would potentially increase or decrease conformity levels as the participants simply may not care about the outcome

EXT

= this experiment also doesn't consider individual differenced that could influence how likely a participant is to conform, such as their eyesight, if one of the naive participants wore glasses, this could make them more likely to conform due to ISI as they be less confident on their ability to correctly judge the length of lines.

LB

= this means that the study has low ecological validity and the results cannot be vernalised to other real life situations of conformity

A03 - WEAKNESS: sample

P

= In addition to this, the experiment can be criticised as lacking population validity.

EV

= The study used a biased sample because all of the participants were white, male, of roughly the same age, and all came from the same college in the US. The sample size was also limited as it only included 50 participants, 7 of which were actually naïve participants.

EX

= This means that the findings cannot be generalised because they only represent the conformity levels of a small portion of a very specific group of people and doesn't acknowledge how these levels may change with females, different age groups, different ethnicities, or even different states in America.

EXT

= As well as this, the study is culture bound because it took place in the US which is an individualistic society. Therefore, the findings may have varied had the experiment occurred in a collectivist society such as China, as conformity rates are likely to be lower in individualistic cultures, and this could explain why 1/4 of the participants in Asch's study never conformed.

LB

= Consequently, the findings from Asch's research cannot be generalised to the rest of the world and therefore is not a reliable explanation of conformity or NSI.