Conformity (Asch)

baseline procedure:

aim: measure the extent people conform to others opinions in situations where others are clearly wrong

findings: naive participants conformed 36.8% high level of conformity when the situation is unambiguous, individual differences - 25% never gave wrong answer (never conformed) 75% conformed at least once

conducted further studies and found that certain variables lead to more or less conformity

variables:

group size

aim: varied number of confederates in groups between 1-15

findings: with 2 confederates conformity to wrong answers was 13.6% with 3 confederates it was 31.8%. above three the conformity rate levelled off, adding more than three made little difference

explanation: people are sensitive to their opinions as only one confederate was enough to sway opinions

unanimity

procedure: introduced dissenting confederate, sometime correct answer sometimes wrong answer, but always disagree with the majority

findings: presence of a dissenter, conformity reduced to less than a quater level it was when uanimous. conformity reducued if dissenter gave right or wrong answer

explanation:having a dissenter enabled the naive participant to behave more independently

task difficulty

procedure: made the line judging task harder by making lines more similar. difficult to see differences between the lines

finding: confomity increased

explanation: siotuation is more ambiguous, more likely to look to others and assume they are right or wrong. ISI plays a greater role when task is harder

evaluation:

limitation: situation and task are artificial

they knew they were in a research study, task was trivial no reason not to conform. Fiske (2014) asch's groups werent like rel life groups

findings dont generaliseto everyday life

no real world application

limitation: little application

Asch studied American men. Neto (1995) women may be more conformist, more concered about social relationships. USA an individualist culture and studies in collective cultures higher conformity rates

asch's findings tell us little about conformity in other cultures and women

laack of generaliable data

strength: supporting evidence

Lucas et al (2006) participants solve easy and hard math problems, given answers that claimed to be from 3 other students, more often conformed when they dont know the answer

asch was correct that task difficulty is one variable affecting conformity

research support, usfulness

counterpoint: more complex than asch thought, Lucas et.al's shows conformity relates to confidence. high confidence less conformity. individual level factors interat with situationals ones