Asch (Conformity) Booklet 9

Outline the procedure of Asch’s research. Make sure to include:

• Participant information

• How many trials

• Confederates?

• What was the DV?

• 123 American men

• After 3 trials confederates gave false answers

• 5 confederates with one participant

• How often participants conform and give an incorrect answer

What were the findings of Asch’s baseline study?

• Participants conformed 36.8% of the time

• 75% of participants conformed at least once

• Control with no confederates was conducted and mistakes were only made 1% of the time

What explanation of conformity could explain these findings? Why?

• Normative social influence (NSI)

• Most of the participants said that they knew their answers were incorrect, but they went along with the group in order to fit in, or because they thought they would be ridiculed

What were the three variations of Asch’s research?

• Group size

• Unanimity

• Task difficulty

Group Size: what relationship did Asch find between group size and conformity? What does this mean? Add statistics to back up your explanation.

• Found a curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity

• Conformity rates were low with 1 or 2 confederates but jumped to 31.8% when there were 3 confederates

• Little increase in conformity after 3 confederates

Group size: does NSI or ISI best explain conformity here? Why?

• NSI

• As group size increases, so does the pressure to conform to the group's norms and expectations

Unanimity: how did Asch investigate this variable?

Adding a dissenter (gives a different answer to confederates) to the group

Unanimity: what did Asch find when he investigated unanimity? Use statistics to back up your point.

• Found conformity decreased by 75%

• This is regardless whether dissenter gave a correct or incorrect answer

Unanimity: does NSI or ISI best explain conformity here? Why?

• NSI

• Allowed participant to act more independently (as chose correct answer even when dissenter chose incorrectly)

Task Difficulty: How did Asch study this and what did he find?

• Increased the difficulty by making the differences between the lines smaller

• Found conformity significantly increased

Task Difficulty: does NSI or ISI best explain conformity her? Why?

• ISI

• Shows that ISI can explain conformity as when we are unsure we look to other people for the right answers

Why is it a limitation that Asch’s research was conducted using a lab study?

• Low external validity

• Less applicable to real life scenarios

How can we criticise the sample? Why is this an important limitation of Asch’s research into conformity?

• Only American males were used

• Females (tested in Jennes jellybean study) are more conformist than males

• America has and individualist culture (making participants more likely to conform than collectivist cultures)

• Only tests the conformity of a small group

What are potential ethical issues of this study? Why is this problematic?

• Participants were not told the real aim of the study

• Deception: thought confederates were other participants

• Therefore they must be debriefed afterwards

What research did Lucas et al. (2006) conduct? How does this research both support and refute Asch’s findings in conformity?

• Asked students to give answers to mathematical problems that were easy or more difficult

• Support: higher levels of conformity for difficult questions (supporting ISI explanation)

• Refute: the maths ability of the participant could vary their level of conformity.

What research did Perrin and Spencer conduct? How did it show that Asch’s findings might be a child of its time? What does this actually mean?

• Repeated Asch’s original study in 1980 with engineering students

• Only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials

• May be due to engineering students being more confident about measuring lines

• Possible that in the 1950s (very conformist period), so made sense to conform to establish social norms

• Society changed great deal since 1950s, becoming less conformist