1.1.3 Asch & Variables for Conformity

Variables affecting conformity include group size, unanimity and task difficulty as investigated by Asch.

Asch 1951:  A classic study of conformity

Asch wanted to investigate whether people would conform to the majority in situations where an answer was obvious

Procedure

• Participants were tested in groups of 6 to 8 
• Each group was presented with a standard line and three comparison lines
• Participants had to say aloud which comparison line matched the standard line in length
• In each group there was only one genuine (naive) participant the remaining were confederates
• The genuine participant was seated second to last and did not know the other participants were fake participants
• The fake confederate participants all gave the same incorrect answer
• Confederates were told to give the incorrect answer on 12 out of 18 trails

Findings

• On average, the genuine participants agreed with the confederates' incorrect answers 36.8% of the time:
  • Genuine participants conformed a third of the time
• 75% of the sample conformed to the majority on at least one trial
• 25% of participants never gave a wrong answer, which shows there were individual differences

Evaluation

Artificial situation and task 

• One limitation of Asch's reach is that it is artificial in both task and situation
• Participants may have gone along with what was expected as they knew they were in a research study (Demand Characteristics) 
• The task was trivial and did not impact the participants in their 'real life', which means there was no reason not to conform
• Findings do not generalise to real-world situations, especially where there could be important consequences to conformity

Limited application 

• Another limitation, Asch's participants were all men from the USA 
• Other research has suggested that women may be more conformist due to their concern with social relationships 
• The USA is an individualist culture (where people are concerned with themselves as the individual more so than in collectivist cultures where they are concerned with their social groups)
• Findings tell us little about how women or those from other cultures may confirm

Research support 

• One strength of Asch's research is it has been supported by other studies
• Lucas et al (2006) asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems and found participants conformed to the wrong answer more often when the problems were hard
• This supports Asch's claim that task difficulty is one variable that effects conformity
• However, Lucas et al (2006) also found that conformity is more complex than suggested by Asch
• They found individual-level factors can influence conformity and those who were confident in their maths skills were less likely to conform
• Asch did not research the roles of individual factors 

Ethical issues

• The genuine (naive) participants were deceived as they thought the confederates were also participants
• However, it can be argued that this ethical cost does not outweigh the findings of the research