Asch Conformity Studies

Background: Solomon Asch

• born in Poland, emigrated to US in the 1920s

• influenced by Gestalt psychology and Max Werthelimer

• critical of ‘irrational crowd’ views (eg LeBon)

• believed conformity could be thoughtful, not mindless

• sought to reconcile democratic values with group influence

the study: line judgement task

setup

• participant: 123 college students

• task: compare line lengths and match one to a standard

• group: 7-9 participants; only one real participant, others were confederates

• first two trials: all give correct answers

• from trial 3: confederates unanimously give incorrect answers on 12 of 18 trials

findings

• conformity rate: participants conformed on ~33% of critical trials

• 75% conformed at least once

• 25% never conformed

interpretations

• a story of conformity?

• or of independence and resistance?

qualitative follow up

participants described:

• self doubt - ‘maybe I am wrong’

• desire to avoid conflict or not spoil the experiment

• social reasoning (politeness, uncertainty)

• different types of responses:

  • independence (confident or hesitant)

  • yielding:

    • distortion of perception (rare)

    • distortion of judgement (maybe they’re right)

    • distortion of action (I know its wrong, but I’ll go along)

variations of the study:

1. task difficulty

   • even when differences in lines were very large, conformity still occurred

2. group size and unanimity

   • larger unanimous majorities increased conformity

   • one dissenter sharply reduced conformity

3. private vs public responses (Dutch and Gerrard, 1995)

   • less conformity when responses were private

ethical considerations

• no formal informed consent (not standard at the time)

• deception about group members

• participants experienced distress, self doubt

• acceptable by today’s standard if:

  • deception is justified

  • harm is minimal

  • debriefing is provided

debates and controversies

generalisation

• is conformity culturally or historically specific?

• replication findings:

  • conformity varies by age, gender, culture

  • collectivist cultures conform more (Bond and Smith, 1996)

  • some studies ( eg Perrin and Spencer, 1980) showed much lower conformity rates

‘group deficit model’

• views group influence as bad or irrational

• led to dual-process models:

  • normative influence: desire to fit in

  • informative influence: desire to be right

re-evaluation

• all reality testing is in some way social

• introduced ‘Referent Informational Inference’ (Turner, 1981) - we conform to in group norms

impact and legacy

psychological research

inspired many landmark studies:

• milgram - obedience

• zimbardo - deindividuation

• moscovici - minority influence

• Reicher - group resistance

• Latane and Darley - bystander effect

in the digital age

• echo chambers on social media

• group membership shapes informational sharing

• 8% of people are truly in ‘bubbles’ (DuBois and Blank, 2017)

• normative and informational influence still relevant

conclusions

• aschs studies show both conformity and independence

• textbooks overemphasise conformity (Griggs, 2015)

• results are more nuanced than commonly remembered