SI- Variables affecting Conformity

Question 1

What was the procedure of Asch’s study?

Answer 1

• Asch (1951) placed 123 American male undergraduate in a group with several confederates.
• The group was asked to look at a ‘standard line’ and then decide individually which of three other ‘test lines’ was the same length as the standard line, without discussing it with one another.
• They then gave their responses one at a time out loud.
• The answer was obvious; however, the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 of the 18 trials.
• The naïve participant was the last, or second to last, one to give their response so they heard the rest of the groups’ responses before giving their own.

Question 2

What were the findings of Asch’s study?

Answer 2

• The chance of making a genuine mistake on this task was only 1% but 33% of the responses given by participants were incorrect.
• 75% of participants conformed in at least one of the 18 trials.
• 5% of participants conformed on every trial but 25% did not conform on any trial.
• When Asch interviewed his participants afterwards he discovered that the majority of participants who had conformed had continued to trust their own judgment but gave the same answer as the group to avoid disapproval (normative social influence)

Question 3

What variables did Asch investigate?

Answer 3

1) Group size
2) Task difficulty
3) Unanimity

Question 4

What occurred when the group size was changed?

Answer 4

• Asch (1956) changed group size.
• Groups with one confederate had a conformity rate of 3%.
• Groups with two confederates had a conformity rate of 13%.
• With three confederates conformity rose significantly to 32%.
• It appears that we can resist the influence of two people fairly easily, but three people are much harder to resist.
• However, there was little change to conformity once groups have reached four confederates

Question 5

What occurred when task difficulty was changed?

Answer 5

• Asch (1956) decided to adjust the task difficulty so he made the test lines more similar in length.
• Under these circumstances the level of conformity increased, possibly because informational social influence was starting to have an impact.
• This is because when we are uncertain, we look to others for confirmation.
• The more difficult the task became the greater the informational social influence and the conformity

Question 6

What occurred when unanimity had changed?

Answer 6

• When the group had unanimity (everyone agreed) conformity increased.
• However, when only one other person in the group gave a different answer from the others, meaning that the group was not unanimous, conformity dropped.
• Asch (1956) found that even the presence of just one confederate who went against the majority reduced conformity from 33% to 5%.
• Even when the confederate gave a different wrong answer to the rest of the group conformity dropped from 33% to 9%.

Question 7

Evaluate Asch’s study.

DISADVANTAGES

Answer 7

1) Asch’s study may not have temporal validity.
- The study was conducted 80 years ago and it is possible that people may have been more conformist than they are now.
- Post-war attitudes that people should work together and consent rather than dissent may have affected the results.

2) The task given to the participants, to match line lengths, is artificial and unlikely to occur in real life.
- Conformity usually takes place in a social context, often with people we know rather than strangers.
- The study therefore lacks mundane realism and ecological validity.

3) This study is gender biasedbecause the sample only contained males(beta bias),this means that the study may not represent female behaviour.
- It is also culturally biased because it only included white American men and may not reflect the behaviour of other cultures. - However, this study has since been replicated(repeated)with different samples(the people who take part in astudy) and cultures and has proven to be reliable (similar results have been found).

4) CONTRADICTING RESEARCH EVIDENCE
- Perrin and Spencer (1980) repeated Asch’s original study on engineering students in the UK and found that only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials – remember in Asch’s study 75% of his sample conformed at least once.
- Thus Perrin and Spencer’s study shows that conformity does not always occur.

5) Participants may have shown demand characteristics as conducted in a lab controlled setting - low internal validity
6) Deception ; the participants thought the other participants were not confederates, full informed consent not gained so goes against ethical code. But realistic results would not have been possible without deception and the participants were debriefed at the end

Question 8

Evaluate Asch’s study.

ADVANTAGES

Answer 8

1) Controlled setting of a laboratory made it easy to control variables - high internal validity

2) Easy to replicate as standardized procedure used (eg the number of confederates; length of lines etc)
. This leads to access of consistency/reliability of the findings; this increased the validity of the conclusions drawn

3) Lucas 2006 - harder maths problems students conformed HOWEVER ppt with high confidence in maths abilities did not conform as much, shows that conformity can be affected by situational variables like task difficulty however there are also individual differences which Asch didn’t account for.