Asch & Variables Affecting Conformity (AQA A Level Psychology)

Asch's study of conformity

• Asch (1951, 1955) set up a study to investigate majority influence (conforming to the group)

• Asch was interested in seeing the extent to which group pressure could influence an individual to go against what their eyes were telling them

  • Would the pressure of being in a group, who all agreed as to the wrong answer force someone to also give an (obvious) wrong answer to a simple question?

• Asch’s study is outlined below:

  • 123 male students from the USA made up the sample of naive participants

  • Each participant sat at a table with 6-8 other male students who were confederates of Asch

  • The group was shown a series of cards with lines shown on them:

    • Their task was to say which of the three lines on the right of the card was the same length as the line shown on the left of the card 

• Each participant (including the confederates) was asked in turn to say which of the three lines on the right was the same length as the line on the far left of the slide

  • 'Is line A, B or C the same length as line X?'

• There were 18 trials per group

  • The confederates gave the right answer on the first few trials, e.g. in the above example the correct answer is ‘line B’

• There were 12 critical trials within the total of 18 trials

  • On each critical trial, the confederates all gave the same incorrect answer to the question of line length, e.g. in the above example an incorrect answer would be ‘line A’

• The results showed that participants gave the wrong answer on 36.8% of the critical trials; 75% of participants conformed at least once

• Asch concluded that people will conform to the majority even when the situation is unambiguous

  • It was clear what the correct answer was per trial yet (some) participants still gave the wrong answer after hearing the confederates give the same wrong answer

• Asch also concluded that:

  • people conform due to NSI (fitting in with the group) and ISI (because they believe the group is better informed than they are)

  • conformity to the majority is common but not inevitable

    • 25% of participants did not conform on any of the trials, i.e. they showed resistance to social influence in the form of group pressure

Evaluation of Asch's study of conformity

Strengths

• Asch used a standardised procedure (e.g. same group number per trial; same number of trials; same question asked)

  • A standardised procedure means that the study can be replicated many times over

    • Repeated replications should show consistent results which equals high reliability

• Replications of Asch's study (Smith & Bond, 1996) have been used to identify cross-cultural differences in conformity which gives validity to the idea that conformity is linked to group cohesion

  • The highest rates of conformity in the study were from collectivist cultures

    • These cultures value the needs of the group above individual needs

Limitations

• Asch’s research took place in the 1940s/50s, when conformity was arguably higher, directly after World War II and pre-civil rights and the feminist movement

  • This observation has led to the study being labelled ‘a child of its time'

    • thus, the study lacks temporal validity

• It is possible that some of the participants may have guessed the aim of the study due to the easiness of the task

  • If any participants had guessed the aim then they may simply have gone along with giving the wrong answer as this is what they thought was required of them (known as response bias)

  • Response bias reduces the validity of the findings

Asch's variable: group size

• Asch conducted variations of his original line-length procedure to test how conformity changes depending on the condition

• To test the effect of group size Asch instigated the following procedure:

  • With one confederate (i.e. just one person giving the wrong answer) conformity dropped to just 3% of the critical trials

  • When the group size increased to two confederates conformity was 12.8% of the critical trials

  • In a group containing three confederates conformity rose to 31.8% of the critical trials

    • The above finding is the same percentage as in Asch’s original experiment, in which there were six to eight confederates

    • Thus, conformity peaks with three confederates, once majority pressure is established

Asch's variable: unanimity

• Unanimity refers to the extent of agreement/consensus across a group

  • In Asch’s original procedure the confederates all gave the same incorrect answer on the critical trials i.e. they were unanimous in the answers they gave

• To test the effect of unanimity Asch asked one of the confederates to give the correct answer (i.e. the non-conforming answer) throughout, resulting in conformity dropping to 5%

  • This finding shows that support from another person makes it easier to resist the pressure to conform to the majority

  • In another variation, one of the confederates gave a different incorrect answer to the majority, resulting in conformity dropping to 9%

    • Disrupting group unanimity is therefore one way to reduce conformity

Asch's variable: task difficulty

• In Asch’s original experiment, the correct answer was obvious i.e. it was an unambiguous task

• To test the effect of task difficulty Asch instigated the following procedure:

  • The task was made more difficult by minimising the difference between the length of the lines i.e. it was not as easy to detect which line was longer, shorter etc

  • In other words, the task becomes more ambiguous

  • Asch found the rate of conformity when faced with the ambiguous task increased (he didn’t report the percentage)

    • Thus, when a task is difficult (ambiguous) and people conform to the incorrect answer, it can be explained by ISI (the need to be right; looking to others for the answer)

    • When a task is easy (unambiguous) and people conform to the incorrect answer, it can be explained by NSI (the need to be liked; realising the answer is wrong but they won't risk rejection by going against the group)