Conformity: Variables affecting conformity

What was Asch’s baseline procedure?

Solomon Asch (1951) devised a procedure to assess to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others, even in a situation where the answer is certain. (i.e. unambiguous).

• Standard and comparison lines

123 American men were tested, each in one group with other apparent participants.

Each participant saw two large cards on each trial. The line X on the left hand card is the standard line.

The lines A, B and C are the three comparison lines.

One of the comparison lines is always clearly the same length as X, the other two are substantially different (i.e. clearly wrong).

On each trial the participants had to say (out loud) which of the comparison lines was the same length as the standard line X.

What was the arrangement of the participants and the findings of Asch’s baseline procedure?

-physical arrangement

• The participants were tested in groups of 6 to 8, only one was a genuine (naïve) participant, always seated either last or (as here) next to last in the group. The others were all confederates of Asch - that is, they all gave the same (incorrect) scripted answer each time

Baseline findings

• on average, the genuine participants agreed with confederates’ correct answers 36.8% of the time (i.e. they conformed about a third of the time)

• there were individual differences, 25% of the participants never gave a wrong answer (e.g. never conformed).

What were the variables investigated by Asch?

• Group size

• Task difficulty

• Unanimity

How did Asch investigate the effects of group size?

Asch wanted to know whether the size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group. To test this he varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15 (so the total group size was from 2 to 16)

• Asch found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate.

• conformity increased with group size, but only up to a point.

• With three confederates, conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%. But the Prescence of more confederates made little difference - conformity rates levelled off.

• This suggests that most people are sensitive to the views of others because just one or two confederates was enough to sway opinion.

How did Asch investigate the effects of Unanimity?

Asch wondered if a lack of unanimity would affect the naïve participant’s conformity. He introduced a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates. In one variation of the study this person gave the correct answer and in another variation he gave a different (wrong) one.

• The genuine participant conformed less often in the Prescence of a dissenter

• the rate decreased to less then a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous.

• The Prescence of a dissenter appeared to free the naïve participant to behave more independently.

• This was true even when the dissenter disagreed with the genuine participant

This suggests that the influence of the majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous. And that non-conformity is more likely when cracks are perceived in the unanimous view.

How did Asch investigate the effects of Task difficulty?

Asch wanted to know whether making the task harder would affect the degree of conformity. He increased the difficulty of the line-judging task by making the standard line and the comparison lines more similar to each other in length.

• This meant it became harder for the genuine participants to see the differences between the lines.

• Asch found that conformity increased. It may be that the situation is more ambiguous when the task becomes harder - it is unclear to the participants what the right answer is.

• In these circumstances, it is natural to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and you are wrong (informational social influence)

Evaluate Asch’s Baseline procedure. (hint: Artificial situation and task, limited application, research support and its counterpoint.)

Artificial situation and task ❌

Participants knew they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with what was expected (demand characteristics) .

• The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and therefore was really no reason not to conform.

• Also according to Susan Fiske (2014) ‘Asch’s groups were not very groupy’ i.e. they did not really resemble groups that we experience in everyday life.

This means that findings do not generalise to real-world situations, especially those where the consequences of conformity might be important.

limited application ❌

Another limitation is that Asch’s participants were American men.

• Other research suggests that women may be more conformist, possibly because they are concerned about social relationships and being accepted (Neto 1955).

• Furthermore, the US is a fairly individualist culture (i.e. where people are more concerned about personal needs rather than those of the social group)

• Similar conformity studies conducted in more collectivist cultures (e.g. China where the social group is considered more important than personal needs) have found that conformity rates are higher (bond and smith 1996)

This means that Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures

Research support ✅

Senuri Wijenayake et al. (2020)

• gave participants an online quiz.

• They then showed participants made-up results from fellow respondents and gave the participants the chance to change their answers.

• They found that 78% conformed to a wrong answer at least once - similar to Asch’s figure of 75%.

This confirms Asch’s original findings and suggests that the findings are still valid in modern society.

Counterpoint:

However, this study also shows that conformity is more complex than Asch suggested. Participants who scored highly for the personality traits of conscientiousness and neuroticism (anxiety and unstable mood) conformed more.

• This shows that individual differences, as well as situational variables, affect conformity. (Asch did not research the role of individual differences)