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Conformity
(Asch) - Coggle Diagram
Conformity
(Asch)
Variations in Asch study
- to find out which variables had significant effects on amount of conformity
- difference between line length was made much smaller (more ambiguous)
- level of conformity increased
- suggests informational social influence to get right answer
- however - when people have high self-efficacy (believe in own abilities) than conformity levels drop
- e.g. Perrin & Spencer (1980) repeated Asch's original study with engineering students
- only 1 student conformed in total of 396
- found very little conformity when majority consisted of just 1 or 2 individuals
- but - when majority of 3 - proportion of conformity jumps to 31.8%
- when majority increases to more than 3, levels of conformity do increase substantially more
- consequently there is a curvilinear relationship
- in original study - confederates all gave same wrong answer - when genuine participant was given support of either another real participant/confederate - conformity levels dropped to about 5%
- either when 'dissenter' gave silly answer (different to rest) - led to less conformity by 'real' participant
- Asch concluded - breaking group's consensus that was major factor in conformity reduction
EVALUATION
-
!LIMITATION!
Limited Application
- all participants were American men
- women may be more conformist
- US is an individualist culture (more concerned about themselves than social group)
- similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures have found conformity rates are higher
- means Asch's findings tell us little about conformity in women and other cultures
!STRENGTH!
Research support
- support effects of task difficulty
- Lucas et al (2006) asked participants to solve 'easy' & 'hard' maths problems
- participants conformed more often when problems were harder
- shows Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is 1 variable that affects conformity
COUNTERPOINT
- Lucas et al's study found conformity is more complex than Asch suggested
- Participants with higher confidence in their maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than these with low confidence
- shows an individual-level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables
- Asch didn't research roles of individual factors
conformity - change in a persons behaviour/opinions as a result of real/imagined pressure from a person/group
Procedure:
- asked student volunteers to take part in 'vision test'
- All but 1 participants were confederates
- real purpose of study - see if lone 'genuine' participant would go along with others (compliance to majority)
- 123 male American students
- shown 1 card with standard line & another card with 3 lines on it & asked to say which ones matched
- real participants always last to answer
- confederates gave wrong answer 12 times out of 18
Findings:
- on 12 critical trials - 37% of responses made by genuine participants were incorrect (went along with wrong answer)
- unambiguous task - but very clear what right answer was
- 25% of participants never conformed
- 75% conformed at least once
- 5% conformed everytime
- to check that task was unambiguous - conducted control trial with no confederates & found that people got answer wrong about 1% of time