Key Study : Asch - Variables Affecting Conformity

Key Study : Asch (1956) - Variables Affecting Conformity

Asch asked student volunteers to take part in a visual discrimination task, although, unbeknown to these volunteers, all but one of the participants were really confederates of the investigator. The real purpose of the study was to see how the lone 'real' particpant would react to the behaviour of the confederates.

Procedure

In total, 123 male US undergraduates were tested. Participants were seated around a table and asked to look at three lines of different lengths. They took turns to call out which of the three lines they thought was the same length as a 'standard' line with the real particpant always answering second to last.

Although there was always a fairly obvious solution to this task, on 12 of the 18 trials the…