Conformity: Asch's research

Original study

Asch (1951) tested conformity by gathering his participants, 123 American undergraduate males, and showing them two large white cards at a time. One card would have the standard line and the other would have 3 comparison lines, one of which matched the standard line in size. The other two were substantially different in size, making the situation unambiguous. The participant was then asked which line matched the standard line. Each naive participant was placed in a group of 6-8 confederates, who knew the aim of the study and gave the same wrong answer on 12/18 trials. On the first few trials they all gave the correct answer but this eventually turned into all of them giving the wrong answer. Asch found that the naive participants gave a wrong answer 36.8% of the time. Overall, 25% of participants didn't conform on any trials, meaning that 75% conformed at least once. The term Asch effect has been coined because of this- used to describe how participants will conform even if the situation is unambigious. When interviewed post experiment, the participants said they conformed due to seeking acceptance and avoiding rejection, which suggests normative social influence.

Variations

He then took his study and made some changes to the variables in order to see the effect it has on conformity. He changed the group size, unanimity and task difficulty.

Group size- Asch wanted to see if the group size was more important than animity. Asch found that with 3 confederates, the wrong answer given by the naive participant increased to 31.8% but the addition of further confederates past this point didn't make much difference to the level of conformity. This suggests that only a small minority in agreement is needed to affect conformity.

Unanimity- He tested whether the addition of a dissenter would affect the conformity of the naive participant…