Conformity (1)

Note: According to the specification, you do not need to know the procedure of Asch's baseline research.

What is conformity?

A change in a person’s behaviour / opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from someone.

What was the aim of Asch’s baseline research?

To what extent people will conform to the opinion of others

Who were the participants in Asch’s baseline research?

123 American men

What was the procedure of Asch’s baseline research?

• PPs and confederates were presented with 4 lines; 3 comparison lines and 1 stimulus line

• They were asked to state which of the 3 lines was the same length as a stimulus line

• The true PP answered last

• Confederates would give the same incorrect answer for 12/18 trials.

• Asch observed how often the participant would give the same incorrect answer as the confederates

What were the findings of Asch’s research?

• 36.8% conformed

• 25% never conformed

• 75% conformed at least once

What are the 3 variables that Asch found affected conformity?

1. Group size

2. Unanimity

3. Task difficulty

How does Group Size affect conformity?

Asch tested group size by varying the number of confederates from 1 to 15.

He found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate.

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

With 3 confederates, conformity rose to 31.8%

More than 3 confederates made little difference.

This suggests that people are sensitive to other’s views because just 1 confederate was enough to sway opinion.

What does unanimity mean?

The extent to which all the members of a group agree

How does Unanimity affect conformity?

Asch tested if the presence of a non-conforming person would affect the naïve participants conformity.

To do this, he introduced a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates.

The true PP conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter.

The rate decreased to less than a quarter of the level it was when the majority was unanimous.

The presence of a dissenter appeared to free the naïve PP to behave more independently.

This suggests that the influence of the majority depends on it being unanimous.

How does Task Difficulty affect conformity?

Asch increased the difficulty of the line-judging task by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar in length.

This made it harder for the true PPs to see the differences between the lines

Asch found that conformity increased. This is because the situation becomes more ambiguous when the task becomes harder - it is unclear to the pps what the right answer is → Thus, they look to other people for guidance (ISI)

What is a limitation of research into conformity?

Artificial situation and task

Participants knew they were in a study → demand characteristics

The task of identifying lines was trivial and thus there was no reason NOT to conform!

Fiske said “Asch’s groups were not very groupy’ → they did not resemble groups we experience in everyday life

This means the findings do not generalise to real-world situations

What is another limitation of research into conformity?

Asch’s participants were American men → Limited application

Neto suggests women may be more conformist because they are concerned about social relationships and being accepted.

US is an individualist culture

Conformist studies in collectivist cultures (e.g. China) have found higher conformity rates.

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

What is a strength of research into conformity?

Research support for task difficulty

Lucas et al asked their participants to solve ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ maths problems.

PPs were given answers from 3 other students (not actually real)

The PPs conformed more often when the problems were harder

This shows Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is a variable that affects conformity

COUNTERPOINT

Lucas et al’s study found that conformity is more complex than Asch said.

PPs with high confidence in their maths ability conformed LESS on hard tasks than those with low confidence.

This shows that individual factors can influence conformity.

What is another limitation of research into conformity?

Ethical issues

The naive participants were DECEIVED because they thought the confederates were genuine participants.