Each student viewed a card with a line on it, followed by another with
three lines labeled A, B, and C. One of these lines was
the same as that on the first card, and the other two lines were clearly
longer or shorter (i.e., a near-100% rate of correct responding was
expected). Each participant was then asked to say aloud which line
matched the length of that on the first card.
A Closer Look At Conformity - Do you think of yourself as a conformist or a non-conformist? If you are like most people, you probably believe that you are non-conformist enough to stand up to a group when you know you are right but conformist enough to blend in with the rest of your peers.
Research suggests that people are often much more prone to conform than they believe they might be.
Imagine yourself in this situation: You've signed up to participate in a psychology experiment in which you are asked to complete a vision test.
Seated in a room with the other participants, you are shown a line segment and then asked to choose the matching line from a group of three segments of different lengths.
The experimenter asks each participant individually to select the matching line segment. On some occasions, everyone in the group chooses the correct line, but occasionally, the other participants unanimously declare that a different line is actually the correct match.
So what do you do when the experimenter asks you which line is the right match? Do you go with your initial response, or do you choose to conform to the rest of the group?
Solomon Asch’s Conformity Experiments
In psychological terms, conformity refers to an individual's tendency to follow the unspoken rules or behaviors of the social group to which he or she belongs. Researchers have long been interested in the degree to which people follow or rebel against social norms. Asch was interested in looking at how pressure from a group could lead people to conform, even when they knew that the rest of the group was wrong. The purpose of Asch's experiments? To demonstrate the power of conformity in groups.
How Were Asch’s Experiments Carried Out?
Asch's experiments involved having people who were "in" on the experiment pretend to be regular participants alongside those who were actual, unaware subjects of the study. Those that were in on the experiment would behave in certain ways to see if their actions had an influence on the actual experimental participants.
In each experiment, a naive student participant was placed in a room with several other confederates who were "in on" the experiment. The naive subjects were told that they were taking part in a "vision test." All told, a total of 50 students were part of Asch’s experimental condition.
The confederates were all told what their responses would be when the line task was presented. The naive participant, however, had no inkling that the other students were not real participants. After the line task was presented, each student was verbally announced which line (either 1, 2, or 3) matched the target line.
There were 18 different trials in the experimental condition, and the confederates gave incorrect responses in 12 of them, which Asch referred to as the "critical trials." The purpose of these critical trials was to see if the participants would change their answer in order to conform to how the others in the group responded.
During the first part of the procedure, the confederates answered the questions correctly. However, they eventually began providing incorrect answers based on how they had been instructed by the experimenters.
The study also included 37 participants in a control condition. In order to ensure that the average person could accurately gauge the length of the lines, the control group was asked to individually write down the correct match. According to these results, participants were very accurate in their line judgments, choosing the correct answer 99% of the time.
Results of the Asch Conformity Experiments
Nearly 75% of the participants in the conformity experiments went along with the rest of the group at least one time.
After combining the trials, the results indicated that participants conformed to the incorrect group answer approximately one-third of the time.
The experiments also looked at the effect that the number of people present in the group had on conformity. When just one other confederate was present, there was virtually no impact on participants' answers. The presence of two confederates had only a tiny effect. The level of conformity seen with three or more confederates was far more significant.
Asch also found that having one of the confederates give the correct answer while the rest of the confederates gave the incorrect answer dramatically lowered conformity. In this situation, just 5 to 10% of the participants conformed to the rest of the group (depending on how often the ally answered correctly). Later studies have also supported this finding, suggesting that having social support is an important tool in combating conformity.1
What Do the Results of the Asch Conformity Experiments Reveal?
At the conclusion of the experiments, participants were asked why they had gone along with the rest of the group. In most cases, the students stated that while they knew the rest of the group was wrong, they did not want to risk facing ridicule. A few of the participants suggested that they actually believed the other members of the group were correct in their answers.
These results suggest that conformity can be influenced both by a need to fit in and a belief that other people are smarter or better informed.
Given the level of conformity seen in Asch's experiments, conformity can be even stronger in real-life situations where stimuli are more ambiguous or more difficult to judge.
Factors That Influence Conformity
Asch went on to conduct further experiments in order to determine which factors influenced how and when people conform. He found that:
- Conformity tends to increase when more people are present. However, there is little change once the group size goes beyond four or five people.
- Conformity also increases when the task becomes more difficult. In the face of uncertainty, people turn to others for information about how to respond.
- Conformity increases when other members of the group are of a higher social status. When people view the others in the group as more powerful, influential, or knowledgeable than themselves, they are more likely to go along with the group.
- Conformity tends to decrease, however, when people are able to respond privately. Research has also shown that conformity decreases if they have support from at least one other individual in a group.1
Criticisms of the Asch Conformity Experiments
One of the major criticisms of Asch's conformity experiments centers on the reasons why participants choose to conform. According to some critics, individuals may have actually been motivated to avoid conflict, rather than an actual desire to conform to the rest of the group.
Another criticism is that the results of the experiment in the lab may not generalize to real-world situations.
Many social psychology experts believe that while real-world situations may not be as clear-cut as they are in the lab, the actual social pressure to conform is probably much greater, which can dramatically increase conformist behaviors.
Asch's Contributions to Psychology
The Asch conformity experiments are among the most famous in psychology's history and have inspired a wealth of additional research on conformity and group behavior. This research has provided important insight into how, why, and when people conform and the effects of social pressure on behavior.
Kendra Cherry
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-asch-conformity-experiments-2794996
Solomon Asch - Conformity Experiment
By Dr. Saul McLeod, updated Dec 28, 2018
Solomon Asch conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.
Sherif's (1935) conformity experiment was that there was no correct answer to the ambiguous autokinetic experiment. How could we be sure that a person conformed when there was no correct answer?
Asch (1951) devised what is now regarded as a classic experiment in social psychology, whereby there was an obvious answer to a line judgment task.
If the participant gave an incorrect answer it would be clear that this was due to group pressure.
Experimental Procedure
Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, whereby 50 male students from Swarthmore College in the USA participated in a ‘vision test.’
Using a line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates/stooges. The confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the line task.
The real participant did not know this and was led to believe that the other seven confederates/stooges were also real participants like themselves.
Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was always obvious. The real participant sat at the end of the row and gave his or her answer last.
There were 18 trials in total, and the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 trails (called the critical trials). Asch was interested to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view.
Asch's experiment also had a control condition where there were no confederates, only a "real participant."
Findings
Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about one third (32%) of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials.
Over the 12 critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participants never conformed.
In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer.
Conclusion
Why did the participants conform so readily? When they were interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed or thought "peculiar.
A few of them said that they really did believe the group's answers were correct.
Apparently, people conform for two main reasons: because they want to fit in with the group (normative influence) and because they believe the group is better informed than they are (informational influence).
Critical Evaluation
One limitation of the study is that is used a biased sample. All the participants were male students who all belonged to the same age group. This means that the study lacks population validity and that the results cannot be generalized to females or older groups of people.
Another problem is that the experiment used an artificial task to measure conformity - judging line lengths. How often are we faced with making a judgment like the one Asch used, where the answer is plain to see?
This means that the study has low ecological validity and the results cannot be generalized to other real-life situations of conformity. Asch replied that he wanted to investigate a situation where the participants could be in no doubt what the correct answer was. In so doing he could explore the true limits of social influence.
Some critics thought the high levels of conformity found by Asch were a reflection of American, 1950's culture and told us more about the historical and cultural climate of the USA in the 1950s than then they do about the phenomena of conformity.
In the 1950s America was very conservative, involved in an anti-communist witch-hunt (which became known as McCarthyism) against anyone who was thought to hold sympathetic left-wing views. Conformity to American values was expected. Support for this comes from studies in the 1970s and 1980s that show lower conformity rates (e.g., Perrin & Spencer, 1980).
Perrin and Spencer (1980) suggested that the Asch effect was a "child of its time." They carried out an exact replication of the original Asch experiment using engineering, mathematics and chemistry students as subjects. They found that on only one out of 396 trials did an observer join the erroneous majority.
Perrin and Spencer argue that a cultural change has taken place in the value placed on conformity and obedience and in the position of students. In America in the 1950s students were unobtrusive members of society whereas now they occupy a free questioning role.
However, one problem in comparing this study with Asch is that very different types of participants are used. Perrin and Spencer used science and engineering students who might be expected to be more independent by training when it came to making perceptual judgments.
Finally, there are ethical issues: participants were not protected from psychological stress which may occur if they disagreed with the majority.
Evidence that participants in Asch-type situations are highly emotional was obtained by Back et al. (1963) who found that participants in the Asch situation had greatly increased levels of autonomic arousal.
This finding also suggests that they were in a conflict situation, finding it hard to decide whether to report what they saw or to conform to the opinion of others.
Asch also deceived the student volunteers claiming they were taking part in a 'vision' test; the real purpose was to see how the 'naive' participant would react to the behavior of the confederates. However, deception was necessary to produce valid results.
Asch Conformity Video Clip
The clip below is not from the original experiment in 1951, but an acted version for television from the 1970s.
Factors Affecting Conformity
In further trials, Asch (1952, 1956) changed the procedure (i.e., independent variables) to investigate which situational factors influenced the level of conformity(dependent variable).
His results and conclusions are given below:
Group Size
Asch (1956) found that group size influenced whether subjects conformed. The bigger the majority group (no of confederates), the more people conformed, but only up to a certain point.
With one other person (i.e., confederate) in the group conformity was 3%, with two others it increased to 13%, and with three or more it was 32% (or 1/3).
Optimum conformity effects (32%) were found with a majority of 3. Increasing the size of the majority beyond three did not increase the levels of conformity found. Brown and Byrne (1997) suggest that people might suspect collusion if the majority rises beyond three or four.
According to Hogg & Vaughan (1995), the most robust finding is that conformity reaches its full extent with 3-5 person majority, with additional members having little effect.
Lack of Group Unanimity / Presence of an Ally
As conformity drops off with five members or more, it may be that it’s the unanimity of the group (the confederates all agree with each other) which is more important than the size of the group.
In another variation of the original experiment, Asch broke up the unanimity (total agreement) of the group by introduced a dissenting confederate.
Asch (1956) found that even the presence of just one confederate that goes against the majority choice can reduce conformity as much as 80%.
For example, in the original experiment, 32% of participants conformed on the critical trials, whereas when one confederate gave the correct answer on all the critical trials conformity dropped to 5%.
This was supported in a study by Allen and Levine (1968). In their version of the experiment, they introduced a dissenting (disagreeing) confederate wearing thick-rimmed glasses – thus suggesting he was slightly visually impaired.
Even with this seemingly incompetent dissenter conformity dropped from 97% to 64%. Clearly, the presence of an ally decreases conformity.
The absence of group unanimity lowers overall conformity as participants feel less need for social approval of the group (re: normative conformity).
Difficulty of Task
When the (comparison) lines (e.g., A, B, C) were made more similar in length it was harder to judge the correct answer and conformity increased.
When we are uncertain, it seems we look to others for confirmation. The more difficult the task, the greater the conformity.
Answer in Private
When participants were allowed to answer in private (so the rest of the group does not know their response) conformity decreases.
This is because there are fewer group pressures and normative influence is not as powerful, as there is no fear of rejection from the group.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html
One Dissenter - Variables That Increase or Decrease Conformity
...one of the crucial factors that determine the likelihood that the subject's opinion will conform to that of the majority is whether or not the majority opinion is unanimous. If a participant is joined by even one ally who gives the correct response (while the rest of the group give inncorrect responses), the subject's tendency to conform to the erroneous judgment of the majority drops sharply. In fact, even if unanimity is broken by a non-ally, the power of the group is seriously diminished. That is, if one of the other group members gives an incorrect response that is different from the error of the majority (answering that the correct line is C as the rest of the group responds A), the presence of this fellow dissenter dramatically reduces the pressure to conform, and the subject is likely to give the correct response: line B. A fellow dissenter exerts a powerful freeing effect from the influence of the majority. If there is unanimity, however, the actual size of the majority need not be very great in order for it to elicit maximum conformity from a person. In fact, the tendency for someone to conform to group pressure is about as great when the unanimous majority consists of only 3 other people as it is when the unanimous majority is 16.
One way conformity to group pressure can be decreased is by inducing the individual to make some sort of commitment to his or her initial judgment. Picture yourself as an umpire at a major-league baseball game. There is a close play at first base and you call the runner out—in the presence of 50,000 fans. After the game, the three other umpires approach you and each says that he thought the runner was safe. How likely are you to alter your judgment? Compare this with a situation (like the Asch situation) in which each of the three umpires calls the runner safe and then it is your turn to make a judgment. Such a comparison was made in an experiment by Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard, who used the Asch paradigm and found that where there was no prior commitment (as in the Asch experiment), 24.7 percent of the responses conformed to the erroneous judgment of the majority. But, when the individuals had publicly committed themselves before hearing the judgment of the other "umpires," only 5.7 percent of their new responses were conformist.
Two other important factors are the kind of person the individual is and who constitutes the group. Individuals who have generally low self-esteem are far more likely to yield to group pressure than those with high self-esteem. Furthermore, task-specific self-esteem can be influenced within a given situation. Thus, individuals who are allowed to have prior successes with a task like judging the lengths of lines are far less likely to conform than those who walk into the situation cold. By the same token, if individuals believe they have little or no aptitude for the task at hand, their tendency to conform increases.
There are also some important cultural differences—nicely illustrated by the following differences in folk wisdom: In America, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"; in Japan, "the nail that stands out gets pounded down." This general impression was confirmed by Rod Bond and Peter Smith. In a recent analysis of some 133 experiments using the Asch procedure in 17 different countries, they found that conformity is more prevalent in collectivist societies (like Norway, China, and Japan) than in individualistic societies (like the United States and France). There also seems to be a small but consistent gender difference, with women conforming more than men. It should be noted, however, that this gender difference was greatest when the researcher was male or when the group task was male-oriented.
The other side of that issue, of course, has to do with the makeup of the group exerting the pressure. A group is more effective at inducing conformity if (1) it consists of experts, (2) the members (individually or collectively) are important to the individual, or (3) the members (individually or collectively) are comparable to the individual in some way. Thus, to go back to Sam, our hypothetical college student, I would speculate that it is more likely that Sam would conform to the pressure exerted by his acquaintances if he thought they were expert in politics and in making judgments about human relations. Similarly, he would be more likely to yield to those people if they were important potential friends than if they were of no consequence to him. And finally, their being fellow students gives the judgments of Sam's acquaintances more impact on his behavior than, say, the judgment of a group of 10-year-old children, a group of construction workers, or a group of Portuguese biochemists. There is at least one exception to the comparability phenomenon. Research has shown that, if the unanimous majority consists of white children, more conformity is induced in other children—both white and black. Apparently, among children, whites are seen as having more power than blacks. Thus, the power granted to whites by our culture is sufficient to overcome the tendency for people to be more influenced by comparable others, though this situation may be changing as blacks continue to gain power in our society.
The results for the black children may be due in part to a feeling of insecurity. For example, to return to our previous illustration, if Sam had felt sure that he was liked and accepted by his acquaintances, he would have been more likely to voice disagreement than if he felt insecure in his relationship with them. This assertion receives strong support from an experiment by James Dittes and Harold Kelley in which college men were invited to join an attractive, prestigious group and subsequently were given information about how secure their position was in that group. Specifically, all members of the group were informed that, at any point during the lifetime of the group, the members could remove any member in the interest of efficiency. The group then engaged in a discussion of juvenile delinquency. Periodically, the discussion was interrupted and each member was asked to rate every other member's value to the group. After the discussion, each member was shown how the others rated him; in actuality, the members were given prearranged false feedback. Some members were led to believe they were well accepted, and others were led to believe they were not terribly popular. Each member's conformity was measured by the opinions he subsequently expressed in further discussion of juvenile delinquency and by his vulnerability to group pressure during the performance of a simple perceptual task. The results showed that, for the individuals who valued their membership in the group, those who were led to feel only moderately accepted were more likely to conform to the norms and standards set by the group than were those who were led to feel totally accepted. In other words, it's easier for an individual who is securely ensconced in a group to deviate from that group.
Factors associated with conformity are similar when the source of influence is an individual rather than a group. Thus, we are more likely to conform to the behavior or opinions of an individual who is similar or important to us, or who appears to have expertise or authority in a given situation. For example, research has shown that people are more willing to comply with a demand from a person wearing a uniform compared with someone in civilian clothes—even when it comes to relatively trivial matters. In one study, pedestrians were asked to give spare change to a motorist (actually one of the ex- perimenters) who was parked at an expired meter. When approached by a uniformed parking officer, subjects complied with her request far more often than when she was wearing either sloppy clothes or professional, business attire. Thus, the appearance of authority—as potently symbolized by a uniform—can lend legitimacy to a demand, thereby generating high rates of compliance.
The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Edition 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/
