Specification: Variables affecting conformity including group size, unanimity and task difficulty as investigated by Asch. 

Key study: Asch (1951)

Aim: To examine the extent to which social pressure to conform from unanimous majority affects conformity in an unambiguous situation.

Method: Asch’s sample consisted of 123 male undergraduate students from Swarthmore College in the USA, who believed they were taking part in a vision test. Asch used a line judgement task, where he places on real (naïve) participant in a room with six to eight confederates (actors working on behalf of the experimenter), who had agreed their answers in advance. The naïve participant was deceived and was led to believe that the other people were also real participants. The real participant was always seated second from last.

In turn, each person has to say out loud which line (A, B or C) was most like the target line in length. Unlike Jeness’ experiment, the correct answer was always obvious. Each participant completed 18 trials and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trials, called critical trials. Asch wanted to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view, even when the answer was clearly incorrect.

Results: Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers of 32% of the critical trials. 74% of the participants conformed on at least one critical trial and 26% of the participants never conformed. Asch also used a control group, in which one real participant completed the same experiment without any confederates. He found that less than 1% of the participants gave an incorrect answer.

Conclusion: Asch interviews his participants after the experiment to find out why they conformed. Most of the participants said that they knew their answers were incorrect, but they went along with the group in order to fit in, or because they thought that they would be ridiculed. This confirms that participants complied due to normative social influence and the desire to fit in publicly without changing their private viewpoint. 

Evaluating Asch

Asch used a biased sample of 123 male students from a college in America. Therefore, we cannot generalise the results to other populations, for example, female students, as we are unable to conclude whether female students would have conformed in a similar way to male students. As a result, Asch’s sample lacks population validity and further research is required to determine whether males and females conform differently.

Furthermore, it could be argued that Asch’s experiment has low levels of ecological validity. Asch’s test of conformity, a line judgement task, is an artificial task, which does not reflect conformity in everyday life which means the task lacks mundane realism. Consequently, we are unable to generalise the results of Asch to other real-life situations, such as why people may start smoking or drinking around friends, and therefore these results are limited in their application to everyday life.

Asch’s research took place at a particular time in US history when conformity was arguably higher and has been criticised as being ‘a child of its time.’ Since 1950, numerous psychologists have attempted to replicate Asch’s study, for example, Perrin and Spencer (1980) used maths and engineering students and found significantly lower levels of conformity. This suggests that Asch’s experiment lacks historical validity and the conformity rates found in 1950 may not provide an accurate reflection of conformity in modern times.

Asch’s research is ethically questionable. He broke several ethical guidelines, including: deception and protection from harm. Asch deliberately deceived his participants, saying that they were taking part in a vision test and not an experiment on conformity. Although it is seen as unethical to deceive participants, Asch’s experiment required deception in order to achieve valid results. If the participants were aware of the true aim they might have displayed demand characteristics and acted differently. In addition, Asch’s participants were not protected from psychological harm and many of the participants reported feeling stressed when they disagreed with the majority. However, Asch interviewed all of his participants following the experiment to overcome this issue.

Variations of Asch

Following Asch’s original research, numerous variations of his line judgement task were carried out in order to determine which factors influence conformity levels. These variations include: group size, unanimity and task difficulty.

Group Size

Asch carried out many variations to determine how the size of the majority affects the rate of conformity. These variations ranged from one confederate to 15 confederates, and the level of conformity varied dramatically. When there was one confederate, the real participants conformed on just 3% of the critical trials. When the group size increased to two confederates, the real participants conformed on 12.8% of the critical trials. Interestingly, when there were three confederates, the real participants conformed on 32% of the critical trials, the same percentage as Asch’s original experiment, in which there were six to eight confederates. This demonstrates that conformity reaches its highest level with just three confederates, once a majority pressure is created. 

Asch continued investigating group size and in one condition he used 15 confederates. In this experiment the rate of conformity slightly dropped (29%). It is possible that the rate of conformity dropped because the real participants became suspicious of the experiment and not because the pressure to conform is necessarily less in larger groups.

Unanimity

Unanimity refers to the extent that members of a majority agree with one another. In Asch’s original experiment, the confederates all gave the same incorrect answer on the critical trials. In one variation of Asch’s experiment, one of the confederates was instructed to give the correct answer throughout. In this variation, the rate of conformity dropped to 5%. This demonstrated that if the real participant has support for their belief, then they are more likely to resist the pressure to conform. Furthermore, in another variation, one of the confederates gave a different incorrect answer to the majority. In this variation conformity still dropped significantly, by this time to 9%. This shows that if you break or disrupt the group’s unanimous position, then conformity is reduced significantly, even if the answer provided by the supporter is still incorrect.

Task Difficulty

In Asch’s original experiment, the correct answer was always obvious. In one of his variations, he made the task more difficult, by making the difference between the line lengths smaller and therefore appear closed together and more ambiguous. In this variation, Asch found the rate of conformity increased, although he didn’t report the percentage. This is likely to be the result of informational social influence, as individuals look to another for guidance when undertaking an ambiguous task, similar to the results found in Jenness’ experiment, in order to be ‘right’.

Extension Evaluation: Issues and Debates

Social psychology acknowledges the role of situational factors, such as group pressure, in determining human behaviour such as conformity. However, it also suggests that individuals can exercise personal responsibility for their actions and demonstrate free will through showing independent behaviour.

Explanations of conformity (NSI/ISI) adopt a nomothetic approach as they attempt to provide general principles relating to human behaviour when observed under group pressure from a majority.

Social psychology used scientific methods, often in highly-controlled laboratory settings, to investigate key concepts which can be replicated, for example, Asch’s original study. However, the fact that Asch only used male participants in his sample shows a beta bias, as his research may have ignored or minimised the differences between men and women in relation to conformity.

Possible exam questions

1. Describe the procedure of Asch’s study into conformity. (4 marks)

2. A school council committee must decide what to do with some money left over in the school fund before the end of term. Most of the students want to give the money to their favourite local charity. However, two individuals, Lena and Simon, want to buy a snooker table for the common room in the sixth form. 

Briefly explain two factors which might affect whether Lena and Simon will conform to the rest of the school council committee or not. (4)

3. Jane and Norma have just completed their second year at university studying for a degree in psychology. They lived in shared accommodation with five other students all of whom were very health conscious. As a result, their housemates only ate organic food produce. Jane had listened to their standpoint on this lifestyle choice and now she only eats organic food produce too. Norma was content to eat organic food whilst living in the house with the others, but when she went home for the holidays she consumed whatever her mum had bought or made for her. Both girls conformed, but for two different reasons.

Explain which type of conformity each girl – Jane and Norma – was showing. (2 marks)

4. Asch’s research was conducted in a laboratory setting. Outline one strength and one limitation of conducting psychological research such as this in a laboratory. (4 marks)

5. David is taking his Year 1 Psychology exam and has answered a tricky multiple‐choice question. He thinks the correct answer is ‘C’. He strains to look at the exam papers of the students sitting either side of him in the exam hall and glimpses that Monica, a very clever student, has selected ‘B’. As a result, he opts to amend his answer to ‘B’ as well. Using your knowledge and understanding of conformity, explain two reasons why David changed his response from C to B. (4 marks)

6. Outline Asch’s findings in relation to two variables which affect conformity. Briefly explain two limitations of Asch’s conformity research. (8 marks)

7.  Discuss research into conformity. (8 marks)

8. Outline and evaluate research into conformity. (16 marks)

9. Discuss at least two factors that have been shown to affect conformity. Refer to variations of Asch’s experiment in your answer. (16 marks)