Asch: Research and Factors Affecting Conformity

aim of Asch’s (1951) compliance experiment

to investigate the degree to which individuals would conform to a majority who gave obviously wrong answers

procedure of Asch’s (1951) compliance experiment

- sample of 123 American male undergraduate volunteers who were told they were taking part in a visual perception test (as opposed to research into conformity)
- in small groups (7-9) they were shown a series of lines (the ‘standard line’ and 3 comparisons, one of which was the same length as the standard line)
- all but one of the pps in each group were “confederates”
- Asch instructed the confederates to give the same incorrect answer on 12 out of the 18 trials - he called these “critical trials”
- the true (naive) pp was always the last or penultimate one to answer
- a control group was created for comparison purposes, of 36 pps who were tested individually (without group influence) on 20 trials. this was done to test how accurate individual judgements were

findings of Asch’s (1951) compliance experiment

- the control group had an error rate of 0.04% (3 errors from 720 trials)
- there was a 32% conformity rate on the 12 critical trials
- 75% of pps conformed at least once (25% never conformed)
- 5% of pps conformed on all 12 of the critical trials
- post-experiment interviews revealed 3 reasons for pp conformity:
(1) distortion of action → publicly conformed to avoid ridicule (NSI)
(2) distortion of perception → some believed their perception must actually be wrong
distortion of judgement → pps had doubts about own perception and so followed group (ISI)

conclusion of Asch’s (1951) compliance experiment

the judgements of individuals are affected by majority opinions, even when the majority are obviously wrong

AO3 - evaluations of Asch’s research

strength: high internal validity
- lab experiment so high degree of control over variables
- e.g. able to control where the confederates sat, the incorrect answers that they gave, etc.
- suggests IV (agreement of the confederates) only variable affecting DV (conformity) allowing a cause and effect relationship to be established giving the study high internal validity

limitation: lacks ecological validity: zeitgeist
- a ‘child of its time'
- conducted in USA, in 1950s during the era of McCarthyism (a strong anti-Communist feeling in USA) when people were scared to be different
- lacks ecological validity cuz it’s possible the findings are unique to one particular culture and time (zeitgeist)
- thus, the findings may not be reflective of contemporary

limitation: lacks ecological validity: artificial
- pps were placed in an unfamiliar group of strangers (the confederates) and we expected to carry out an artificial task
- the study is not reflective of the pps real life behaviour
- thus, the findings can’t be generalised beyond the artificial setting

limitation: ethical issues
- Asch deceived pps → told them all people sat around table were pps when they were really confederates, deliberately misleading
- it’s now recognised by the BPS guidelines that deception should be avoided and by using deception, it’s not possible to fain fully informed consent for the experiment until afterwards during the debriefing (retrospective consent)

variables affecting conformity in relation to Asch’s study - situational variables

1. group size
2. unanimity
3. task difficulty

group size

- research indicates that conformity rates increase as the size of the majority influence increases
- but, there does come to a point where further increases in the size of the majority doesn’t lead to further increases in conformity

strength: (linking back to Asch’s research)
Asch (1956) found the following results when using one real pp:
- 1 confederate = low conformity rate
- 2 confederates = 13% conformity rate
- 3 confederates = 32% (similar to original study)
- any increase beyond this (even up to 15 confederates) had no further effect on the overall conformity rate.

unanimity

- conformity rates have been found to decline when majority influence isn’t unanimous (in agreement)
- the important factor is in the reduction in the majority's agreement, rather than an individual being given support for their opinions
- conformity rates drop even if the rebel doesn't support the real pps viewpoint

strength: (linking back to Asch’s research)
- Asch (1956) - if there was one confederate who went against the other confederates, conformity dropped from 32% to around 5.5%
- if the rebel went against both the other confederates and the real pps, conformity still dropped to 9%

task difficulty

- greater conformity rates are seen when the task difficulty increases, as the right answer becomes less obvious
- this means that individuals will look to others more for guidance as to what the correct response it

strength: (linking back to Asch’s research)
- Asch (1956) increased task difficulty by making the comparison lines more similar to each other
- pps more likely to conform to incorrect answers