Conformity

Question 1

conformity definition

Answer 1

when a person changes their behaviour or opinions as a result of real/imagined pressure from another person/group of people

Question 2

aim of Asch’s study

Answer 2

to investigate the degree to which individuals would conform to a majority who gave obviously wrong answers. However, he told participants that they would be taking part in a visual discrimination task to test perception.

Question 3

procedure of Asch’s study

Answer 3

• 123 American male student volunteers
• individual participants placed in group of 6-8 confederates
• seated around a table and asked which comparison line was the same length as the stimulus line on 18 trials
• answer was always obvious
• took turns to call out the answer, with the participant always answering last/2nd to last
• 12/18 were critical trials where confederates gave identical wrong answers
• first 6 trials, confederates gave the right answer
• control group of 36 participants tested individually on 20 trials to test how accurate individual judgements were

Question 4

Findings from Asch’s study

Answer 4

• naive participant gave wrong answer 36.8% of the time
• 75% conformed at least 1 wrong answer, 25% never conformed
• control group had an error rate of 0.4% showing how obvious the correct answers were

Question 5

what did post-experiment interviews show

Answer 5

reasons why participants conformed:
- majority conformed publicly to avoid disapproval from other group members but continued privately to trust their own perceptions and judgements
- some participants believed that their perception might actually be wrong so conformed

Question 6

conclusions of Asch’s study

Answer 6

• the judgements of individuals are affected by majority opinions, even when the majority are obviously wrong (unambiguous task)
• As most conformed publicly but not privately, it suggests that they were motivated by normative social influence (conformity to avoid rejection)

Question 7

how scientific is Asch’s study (can be used as strengths)

Answer 7

• Objectivity and replicability- standardised procedures and materials
• hypothesis testing- predicted that participants would conform to give the wrong answer as a result of group pressure
• empirical method- he used a lab experiment when he changed the independent variable (confederates’ answers) to observe an effect on the dependent variable (participants’ answers)
• theory construction- concluded that people are motivated by normative social influence and conform to society in order to avoid rejection

Question 8

evaluation points for Asch’s study and variations (methodological and ethical)

Answer 8

• methodological strength from being scientific
• methodological weakness from lacking mundane realism
• methodological weakness from demand characteristics
• methodological weakness from only testing American males
• ethical weakness from deceit

Question 8

methodological weakness of Asch’s study from lacking mundane realism

Answer 8

• situation was unrealistic as you would not disagree so much with others as to what a correct answer is
• task was trivial so no reason not to conform
• therefore may not be valid as we dont know if the answers of the majority or the lack of mundane realism caused the participants to conform
• so may tell us little about real-life conformity as results dont generalise to situations with important consequences of conformity

Question 9

methodological weakness of Asch’s study from demand characteristics

Answer 9

• confederates werent trained actors so participants may have realised their answers werent real
• therefore guessed the aim and changed their answers accordingly to agree with the majority
• therefore may not be valid as cant be sure that the answers of the majority or demand characteristics caused participants to conform
• so tells us little about real life conformity as results cant generalise to situations where there are important consequences

Question 10

ethical weakness of Asch’s study from deceit

Answer 10

• unethical as involved deceit about aim/confederates
• e.g. told it was about visual perception not conformity
• psychological harm from stress of disagreeing with others which caused embarrassment
• however, ethical short-term costs are outweighed by benefits gained (importance of the results in terms of what we learn about conformity)

Question 11

methodological weakness of Asch’s study from only testing male Americans

Answer 11

• research found that women may be more conformist because they are more concerned about social relationships than men are
• participants were American (individualist culture) where people are more concerned about themselves than the social group
• similar studies conducted in collectivist cultures e.g. China have found conformity rates are higher because such cultures are oriented to group needs
• therefore conformity levels are sometimes higher than Aschs found as his findings may only apply to US men as he didnt take cultural differences and gender into account so only gives a limited view of conformity

Question 12

situational variables

Answer 12

features of the immediate physical and social environment which may influence a person’s behaviour

Question 13

what were the variations of Asch’s study

Answer 13

• group size
• unanimity of the group
• difficulty of task

Question 14

group size variation of Asch’s study

Answer 14

• wanted to know whether size of the group would be more important than the agreement of the group
• there was very little conformity when the majority consisted of 1 confederate
• 13% with 2 confederates
• 31.8% with 3 confederates
• further increases (up to 15) did not increase conformity substantially
• so small majority is not sufficient for influence to be exerted, but size is only important up to a point
• the more people present in the majority, the greater the potential for rejection and so participants are more likely to conform to avoid this rejection (normative social influence)

Question 15

unanimity of the majority variation of Asch’s study

Answer 15

• wanted to know if presence of another non-conforming person would affect the naive participants’s conformity
• he introduced a confederate who disagreed with others (sometimes correctly)
• conformity reduced to 5%, and 9% when the confederate gave a different wrong answer
• dissenter enabled participant to act more independently because:
• he makes participants believe they are less likely to be rejected by the majority if they dont conform so less likely to conform ( less NSI)
• because he makes participants believe majority are less likely to be correct so less likely to conform (less ISI)
• therefore influence of majority depends on the group being unanimous

Question 16

difficulty of the task in Asch’s study variation

Answer 16

• made difference between the line lengths much smaller so correct answer was less obvious and task was more difficult
• level of conformity increased
• suggests that as task gets harder, ISI plays a greater role
• because task is more ambiguous so we are more likely to look at other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and we are wrong