1.1 - Conformity

Question 1

What is conformity?

Answer 1

A change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people

Question 2

Describe Asch’s baseline procedure (1955)

Answer 2

• 123 American men were tested, each one in a group with apparent participants
• Two cards were presented
• One had the standard line (X) and the other had three comparison lines (A,B, and C)
• One of the comparison lines was clearly the same length as X and the other two were substantially different
• Participants had to say which of the comparison lines was the same length as the standard line out loud

Question 3

Describe the physical arrangement of the participants in the baseline study

Answer 3

• Group size of 6 to 8
• Only one genuine participant, seated either last or second to last in the group
• The others were all confederates who gave the same incorrect, scripted answers each time
• The genuine participant did not know the others weren’t genuine participants

Question 4

Describe the baseline findings

Answer 4

• Participants conformed with the confederates’ incorrect answers 37% of the time on average
• There were individual differences, 25% of participants never conformed

Question 5

How did Asch investigate group size?

Answer 5

• Varied the number of confederates from 1 to 15 (group size 2 - 16)
• Curvilinear relationship between group size and conformity rate, conformity increased with group size, but up to a certain point
• Three confederates resulted in a 32% conformity rate but the presence of more confederates made no difference, levelled off
• Suggests that most people are very sensitive to the views of others because 1-2 confederates was enough to sway an opinion

Question 6

How did Asch investigate unanimity?

Answer 6

• Introduced a confederate who disagreed with the others
• They would give a correct answer in one variation and a different wrong one in the other
• The genuine participant conformed less, levels dropped to 6%, often in the presence of a dissenter
• The influence of the majority depends on it being unanimous

Question 7

How did Asch investigate task difficulty?

Answer 7

• Increased the difficulty of the line-judging task by making the standard line and the comparison lines more similar to each other in length
• It became harder for the genuine participants to see the differences between the lines
• Conformity increased due to the ambiguity of the answers in the harder task compared to the normal difficulty

Question 8

What is a limitation of Asch’s research? (artificial situation and task)

Answer 8

• Participants knew they were in a research study and could’ve displayed demand characteristics, impacting the validity of the study
• Task was trivial and had no importance or significance to the participants themselves
• The groups didn’t resemble groups we experience in everyday life
• Findings aren’t generalisable to real-world situations, especially those where the consequences of conformity might be important

Question 9

What is a strength of Asch’s research? (research support)

Answer 9

• Lucas (2006) asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems
• They were given answers from three other students
• Conformity increased when the problems were harder
• Asch is correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity

Question 10

What is a counterpoint to research support? (individual factors)

Answer 10

• Participants with high confidence in their maths abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence
• Suggests individual factors can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables
• Asch did not research the roles of individual factors

Question 11

What is a limitation of Asch’s research? (limited application)

Answer 11

• Participants were all American males
• The US is an individualist culture and similar conformity studies in collectivist cultures such as China found higher conformity rates
• Asch’s findings provide little information about conformity in women and people from other cultures
• Research suggests that women may be more conformist due to their concern about social relationships and being accepted
• Failed replications questions how transferable Asch’s findings are across time and cultures, lacks ecological validity

Question 12

What is another evaluation point? (ethical issues)

Answer 12

• Used deception on his participants
• They weren’t protected from psychological harm as many participants reported feeling stressed when they disagreed with the majority