Social Influence - 2. Conformity: Asch's Research
- Created by: Kiera McQue
- Created on: 10-07-19 14:21
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- Conformity: Asch's Research
- Procedure:
- Standard line vs 3 comparison lines (2 substantially different, one the same)
- 123 male American undergraduates
- naïve pp in group of between 6-8 confederates (deception)
- 18 trials - 12 critical (confederates gave wrong answer)
- Findings:
- pp gave wrong answer 36.8% of the time
- 75% conformed at least once
- Asch effect
- extent to which pp's conform even when situation is unambiguous
- when interviewed after, they said they conformed to avoid rejection
- Asch's Variations
- Group Size
- with three confederates conformity rose to 31.8%
- further confederates made little difference
- Unanimity
- introduced a dissenter
- enabled pp to behave more independently
- Task Difficulty
- made stimulus line and comparison lines more similair
- conformity increased
- Group Size
- Evaluation
- Child of it's time
- Perrin & Spencer (1980)
- repeated study with engineering students
- only one conformed in 396 rials
- students more confident?
- 1950 was conformist time
- Asch effect not consistent across situations/time
- Perrin & Spencer (1980)
- Artificial situation and task
- pp's knew they were in study - demand characteristics
- groups didn't resemble everyday groups
- Fiske (2014)
- "Asch's groups were not very groupy"
- Fiske (2014)
- findings don't generalise to everyday situations
- Limited application
- only men tested - unrepresentative sample
- Neto (1995)
- women may be more conformist - more concerned about social relationships
- US is individualist culture - may not apply to collectivist cultures e.g. China
- conformity may have been higher than usual - pp's answered out loud, in front of strangers
- Williams & Sogon (1984)
- conformity higher when majority are friends
- Williams & Sogon (1984)
- Ethical issues
- pp's deceived
- Child of it's time
- Procedure:
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