Asch’s research -A-Level Psychology

Asch devised a procedure to assess how much people will conform to the opinion of others even in a situation where the answer is certain.

Procedure:

123 male undergraduates were tested.There was one real participant and the rest were confederates.

Participants were seated around a table and asked to look at three lines of different lengths.They then called out which of the three lines they thought was the same length as the standard line with the real participant always answering second to last.

12/18 of the trials were critical trials in which the confederates were told to give the same incorrect answer.Asch wanted to observe whether the real participant would stick to what they believed to be right or would go along with others due to the pressure of the majority.

Findings:

On the 12 critical trials the conformity rate was 33%.When participants were interviewed afterwards they said they conformed to avoid rejection which demonstrates normative social influence in specific compliance.They also said that they continued to privately trust their own judgements.,but changed their public attitude(compliance).Asch also discovered individual differences in conformity rates.

Asch conducted a control condition without the confederates giving wrong answers.Participants made mistakes 1% of the time.   

Asch’s variations:

1. Task difficulty-Asch made the differences between the line lengths much smaller so the answer was less obvious.Under these conditions the level of conformity increased.Lucas et al found that the influence of task difficulty is moderated by the self efficacy of the individual and those with high levels of self efficacy remain more independent in their answers to the maths problems.
2. Group size-Asch found out that with three confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%.But addition of further confederates after this made no difference.
3. Unanimity-He added a confederate that either said another wrong answer or the right answer.Levels of conformity decreased

Situational differences (task difficulty)and individual differences(self efficacy) are both important in determining conformity.

Evaluation:

A child of its time-The research took place in a particular period of US history when conformity was high.In 1956 there was a McCarthyism time where people were scared to go against the majority and so were more likely to conform.Perrin and Spencer repeated the study in the UK in the 1980s with engineering students.Only one student conformed out of 396 trials.This may have been as they were more confident.This is a limitation as it shows how Asch’s effect is not consistent across time so may not be as relevant to behaviour.

Cultural differences in conformity-Markus and Kitayama suggest that a higher level of conformity arises in collectivist cultures because it is viewed favourably as a social glue that binds communities together.

Limited application of findings-Asch only used male participants which creates gender bias and this means findings aren’t generalisable to a whole population(androcentrism).
Artificial situations and task-Demand characteristics must have been present and the task was trivial so there was no reason not to conform.It doesn’t resemble everyday social groups where conformity may be more important.