Pyschology- Conformity

What was Asch’s Aim for his experiment

To see if participants would conform to the majority by giving correct answers even when the answers were obvious

What was his method

123 male/US students
Asch gave 7 male participants a perception task. They had to match a line with another line.
The participants sat in a row. They had to call out which one of the lines had the same length as the test line.
All participants accept one were accomplices. The real participant answered last.
To start with the confederates give the correct answer, after 6 trials, they had started to give a deliberate wrong answer.

Findings

Participants conformed 32% of the time

Explaination

There was a strong pressure to conform due to compliance which can be explained by normative social influence

What a strengths of his experiment

Laboratory Setting- A highly controlled environment where experimenter can control extraneous variables increasing the experiments validity

Weaknesses

All male American Ps - Lack of population validity meaning it’s hard to generalise findings

Unethical - He received Ps on the actual aim of the experiment and he also did not ask for their consent

What is conformity?

A change in behaviour due to real or imagined pressure by a majority group

What are 2 types of conformity

-Compliance

-Internalisation

What is compliance

When someone changes behaviour due to a desire to fit in with a group

Is compliance permanent

No it only lasts as long as the group is present

What’s an explanation of compliance

NSI

What is internalisation

A public and private agreement with a majority group

What’s an explanation of internalisation

Informative Social influence

Us internalisation permenant

Yes

What are the factors affecting the rates of conformity?

Group size

Task difficulty

Uninamity