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Conformity - Aschs Research - Coggle Diagram
Conformity - Aschs Research
Group size : Asch increased the size of the group by adding more confederates , thus increasing the size of the majority . Conformity increased with group size , but only up to a point , levelling off when the majority was greater than 3
Unanimity : The extent to which all the members of a group agree . In ascots studies the majority was unanimous when all the confederates selected the same comparison line . This produced the greatest degree of conformityin the naive participants
Task difficulty : Aschs line judging task is more difficult when it becomes harder to work out the correct answer . Conformity increases because naive participants assume that the majority is more likely to be right
Procedure (1955) : Asch showed participants two cards at a time , one card was a standard line and the other had three comparison lines . Thew participant was asked which of the comparison lines matched the standard line ( the answer was obvious )
123 male undergraduates , each participant was tested alongside 6-8 confederates
On the first few trials the confederates gave the right answers but then they were instructed to all start making the same errors
Each participant took part in 18 trials and on 12 clinical trials the confederates gave the wrong answers
Findings :The naive participant gave a wrong answer 36.8% of the time
25% of the participants did not conform on any trials , 75% conformed at least once
The result is described as the Asch effect - the extent to which participants conform even when the situation is unambigious
When participants were interviewed after they said that they conformed to avoid rejection ( NSI )
Post experiment interviews found that there were 3 reasons for conformity : Distortion of action ( Where the majority of participants who conformed did so publicly but not privately as they wished to avoid ridicule ) , Distortion of perception ( where some participants believed their perception must be actually wrong so conformed ) , Distortion of judgement ( Where some participants had doubts concerning the accuracy of their judgements so conformed to majority view )
Asch further investigated the conditions that might lead to an increase or decrease in conformity
Group size : With 3 confederates conformity rose to 31.8% but the addition of further confederates beyond this made little difference
Unanimity : Introducing a confederate that disagreed with the others decreased conformity by a quarter . The presence of a dissenter enabled the participant to behave more independently
Task difficulty :The task was made more difficult by making the stimulus line and comparison lines similar in length . ISI plays a greater role when the task becomes harder because the task is more ambitious so we look to other for guidance
Evaluation
A child of its time : Perrin and Spencer recreated the original study in 1980 with engineering students in the UK . Only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials , maybe because engineering students felt more confident about measuring lines or it could be that in the 1950sit was an especially conformist time in America . People may have conformed because of the established social norms . The Asch effect is therefore not consistent across all situations and times and so is not a fundamental feature of human behavior
Artificial situation and task : Participants knew that they were taking part in a study so may have shown demand characteristics . The task was trivial and there was no reason not to conform . The naive participants were members of a group but the group didnt resemble groups we would part of in everyday life .Therefore the findings do not generalise to everyday situations
Limited applications of findings : Only men were tested , women might be more conformist because they are more concerned about social relationships . The men in the study were from the US - An individualist culture but if it was conducted in a collectivist culture conformity rates may have been higher
Aschs research became a paradigm for how conformity research should be conducted
Once participant is tested at a time so is uneconomical and time consuming . Crutchfield (1954) improved this in his study
Conclusions
The judgements of individuals are affected by majority opinions even when they are obviously wrong
There are big individual differences in the amount to which people are affected by majority influence
Most participants conformed publicly but not privately suggesting that this was driven by NSI
