CONFORMITY: ASCH'S RESEARCH
AO1
KEY STUDY: ASCH
Procedure
Findings + conclusions
Solomon Asch recruited 123 American male students. Each was tested individually with a group of between 6 + 8 confederates
On each trial participants identified the length of a standard line
On the first few trials the confederates gave the correct answers but then all selected the same wrong answers. Each participant completed 18 trials. On 12 'critical trials' confederates gave the wrong answer
The naïve participants gave a wrong answer 36.8% of the time (i.e. the proportion of critical trials when the participants agreed with the confederates' wrong answers)
There were considerable individual differences : 25% of the participants never gave the wrong answer, so 75% conformed at least once. A few participants conformed most of the time
Most participants said they conformed to avoid rejection (normative social influence) and continued to privately trust their own opinions (compliance, going along with others publicly, but not privately
KEY STUDY: ASCH (1955) VARIABLES AFFECTING CONFORMITY
Procedure
Findings + conclusions
Group size: The number of confederates varied between 1-15
Unanimity: Asch introduced a truthful confederate or a confederate who was dissenting but inaccurate
Group size: With two confederates, conformity to the wrong answer was 13.6% with three confederates it rose to 31.8%. Adding any more confederates made little difference
Unanimity: The presence of a dissenting confederate reduced conformity, whether the dissenter was giving the right or wrong answer. The figure was, on average, 25% wrong answers. Having a dissenter enabled a naive participant to behave more independently
Task difficulty: Asch made the line-judging task harder by making the stimulus line + comparison lines more similar in strength
Task difficulty: Conformity increased when the task was more difficult. So informational social influence plays a greater role when the task becomes harder. The situation is more ambiguous, so we are more likely to look to others for guidance and assume they are right
AO3
Participants were shown a stimulus line and three other lines known as A,B or C
The real participant always answered last or second last in their response after having observed the confederates
LACKS EXTERNAL VALIDITY
The use of students in this key study is not representative of the wider population and older age groups
Therefore this study lacks external validity as we cannot say for certain the results would be similar when using a mixed age range which would be more indicative of real world settings
THE SITUATION + TASK WERE ARTIFICIAL
The line task was trivial so there was no reason not to conform. Also, the naive participants were in a 'group', but not like groups found in everyday life
Findings do not generalise to everyday situations where consequences of conformity are important, and where we interact with groups more directly
Participants knew they were in a study so may have just responded to demand characteristics
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