Conformity

Conformity: A change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people

Asch (1951): 123 American Men judged line lengths, and confederates gave wrong answers. Genuine participants placed second to last conformed (gave an incorrect answer) on 36.8% of trials but 25% never conformed

Asch (1955): Asch extended his baseline study to investigate the variables that might lead to an increase or decrease in conformity

Group size: Asch varied group size from 1 to 15 and found conformity increased to 31.8% up to a group size of three then levelled off

Unanimity: with social support, conformity was reduced to 1/4 of the original rates, even if the non-conforming confederate gave a wrong answer

Task difficulty: the closer the lines were together in length, and the harder the task, the more conformity

Artificial situation and task: Tasks were artificial and participants knew they were in a research study and could have gone along with demand characteristics

Fiske (2014): Concluded Asch’s groups didn't resemble those found in everyday life

Limited Application: Asch’s participants were American men whereas other research suggests women may be more conformist. The US is an individualist culture and similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures have found conformity rates are higher.

Research Support: Lucas et al (2006) found participants conformed more when the maths problems were more difficult and utilised the three “answers” given more when the questions were difficult. However, this also shows the complexity of conformity as participants with high confidence in their maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence.

Ethical Issues: The participants were deceived because they thought the other people were involved were also genuine.