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Psychology , Psychology Experiments

The Asch Conformity Experiments: The Line Between Independence and Conformity

Your school is having students take their annual vision test, but to save time, they’re having multiple students go at once. In each group of four, students will go down a line and verbally give their answers. You’re at the end of the line, which means you give your answer last. The vision test is fairly uneventful for the most part as you all answer what letter is currently being shown. Then as you’re shown what’s clearly the letter “O,” something strange happens: the first student labels it a “Q.” Then the second says, “Q” as well. So does the third. It’s now your turn: what letter do you call out?

Do you stick to your answer, declaring your independence, or do you yield to group conformity? If you yield, do you truly believe that the rest of the students are right, or do you just not want to stand out? Dr. Solomon Asch found answers to such queries in what would later be called the Asch Conformity Experiments.

The Asch Conformity Experiments

The Asch Conformity Experiments were instrumental in discovering much of what we know today about the pressures of group conformity. Asch and his colleagues studied if and how individuals give into or remain strong against group majority and the effects of the majority on beliefs and opinions. Many variations of his experiments have been conducted since, examining the effects of task importance, gender, race, age, and culture on the results. Thus, it can be argued that Asch inspired much of the research conducted on conformity and independence.

The Experiment

In 1951 at Swarthmore College, Dr. Solomon Asch conducted his first conformity experiment using white male college students. Groups of eight students would be shown a large card with a line on it, along with another card with lines labeled A, B, and C. Participants were asked to verbally answer which one of these lines matched the example line in length. No optical illusions were in play here. If participants were asked to complete the task all alone, they correctly answered practically every time.

Only one member of each group was an actual test subject. The rest were actors. Groups were asked to complete 18 trials of this “perception task.” For the first two trials, the actors would give the clearly correct answer, but for the remaining 12 trials, the actors would unanimously vote for a wrong answer.

While a majority of test subjects’ responses remained correct in the actor condition, a significant minority of over one third conformed to the actors’ wrong answers. Further investigation found that only 25% of subjects always defied majority opinion, 5% were always swayed by the group, and the remaining 70% conformed on some trials.

Interviews with the test subjects revealed that all of them had significant doubts on the legitimacy of the group’s answers, regardless of whether they yielded to them or not. Participants who conformed on one or more trials did so out of either informational conformity, i.e. they began to believe that the group must be right because so many of them were in agreement, or normative conformity, i.e. they still believed their own assessments were right but went along with the group so as to not stand out.

Applying It

Despite the fact that only a minority of the total responses were wrong, a majority of subjects gave into group pressure at some point during the experiment. In these trials, participants could clearly see what the correct answer was, yet almost all of them felt uncomfortable, nervous, and doubtful about going against the group. Imagine how much harder it must be to go against the majority on a less clear-cut issue, like who to vote for in an election or how to solve infrastructure problems. Furthermore, the actors making up the majority weren’t trusted officials, close friends, or family members. Sticking to a minority opinion when the group consists of loved ones or respected and trusted authorities is no easy feat. Even in groups with only four students, three people unanimously agreeing generated the same amount of pressure for conformity. Majorities, no matter their size or makeup, are persuasive.

Now, it might not seem particularly dangerous to give into majority opinion so long as you are only displaying normative conformity. After all, you still know you’re right. Yet what good are beliefs if they’re not acted upon? Bad decisions don’t cease to be wrong just because you recognize them as such. If you’re going to vote for a popular yet corrupt official, go along with group bullying, or steal because your friends insist you should, you’re still committing immoral acts. Your reasoning for doing so doesn’t absolve your guilt. Conforming to an incorrect majority still makes you incorrect, regardless of why you decide to conform.

Every participant, whether they conformed or not, doubted the accuracy of the group’s judgment. If you really think you’re right, stick to your initial judgement. It won’t be easy, but making a decision you yourself are proud of is more important. Who knows, maybe you’ll inspire others to join your side.

Think Further

Why do we value conformity so much?
When do you find yourself yielding to group pressure most often?
Do you think a silent majority holds as much power as a vocal majority does? Explain your answer.

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This gave students an opportunity to watch a video to identify key factors in our judicial system, then even followed up with a brief research to demonstrate how this case, which is seemingly non-impactful on the contemporary student, connect to them in a meaningful way

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Home » Uncategorized » Week 13 – Social Influence – Conformity

Week 13 – Social Influence – Conformity

A nice introduction to this unit is given in the following video.

The first of these social explanations comes in the idea of conformity. For the examination we need to be able to identify the types of conformity and the explanations given for conformity.

Types of conformity

Conformity is a change in behaviour or attitude as a result of perceived or real group pressure. Kelman (1958) suggested three ways in which we conform to the group majority. Compliance – Shallow Identification Internalisation – Deep

The person conforms publicly but continues privately to disagree. It is more about going along with the group but privately not changing personal opinion and/or behaviour. It is the shallowest form of conformity.  Example   – A person might laugh at the joke that others are laughing at while privately not finding it very funny.

Identification

The person conforms publicly as well as privately because they have identified with the group norms and they feel a sense of group membership. Often the group has something, say life style or a belonging to somewhere that we want. The change of belief or behaviour is often temporary.  Example   – A person might support a new football team every time they move to a new town.

Internalisation

The person conforms publicly and privately because they have internalised and accepted the views of the group. A change in opinion or behaviour is both public and private & persists even in absence of the group. It is the deepest form of conformity.  Example   – A person may become a vegetarian after sharing a flat with a group of vegetarians at university.

How we can explain conformity

Normative Social Influence (NSI)   This occurs when we wish to be liked by the majority group, so we go along with them even though we may not agree with them. This is really just following the crowd in order to fit in with the ‘norm’ and be liked by the group. This is emotional rather than cognitive driven behaviour.

Informational Social Influence (ISI)   This occurs when we look to the majority group for information as we are unsure about the way in which to behave and we believe they know better. A person will conform because they genuinely believe the majority to be right as we look to them for the right answer. This is cognitive driven behaviour.

Identification with Social Roles

This happens because we learn expectations of how we should behave in certain situations and then conform to these expectations when that situation arises. For example Prison Guards are probably lovely when they’re not at work (we will look more closely at this in a later lesson).

When identifying strengths and weaknesses for this section look through your text book and pick up some supporting research. Have a go at how this would work as a PEE or PEEC. When evaluating theory it is easier to start using the debates over the issues. For example picking up if the theory ignores individual differences in its approach to explaining behaviour.

Sample paragraphs

one strength of ISI as an explanation for conformity is the theory has supporting research. Lucas (2006) asked students to give answers to math problems, these differed in how easy or hard they were. Lucas found that when the maths problem was more difficult pps were more likely to confirm to an incorrect answer than when the answer was more obvious. This study demonstrated that when a situation is ambiguous we look at others for the answer and assume they have more information or better knowledge than ourselves. A strength of supporting research to a theory is it adds scientific value to the explanation. This is especially true when viewing Lucas’s research as it is highly replicable given it is a lab experiment. However it must be noted that the pps are students and therefore may have guessed the aim of the study and effected the validity by demand characteristics, that is changing their behaviour to suit what they perceive as the aim of the study.

one weakness of the theory for conformity is that it is nomothetic in its approach, this means it ignores individual differences. For example not all people need to belong to groups or feel the need to fit in. McGhee et al (1967) used the term nAffiliators to describe people who have a high need to belong and fit in, these people are more likely to conform to fit in, compliance. It is a weakness to assume that in all situations people behave the same at it ignores the complexity of the human conditioning reducing it too far ignorer to produce scientific works. Perrin et al (1980) showed how science and engineering students when given an unambiguous task did not conform to knowing wrong answers. However one strength is it gives us insight into human behaviour and can point to why people conform, lower confidence in situations.

the theory of conformity suggests that we conform either due to ISI or NSI however conformity in situations may be product of both ISI and NSI. Asch’s variations in 1955 showed how when a dissenter went against the group it could have either given an alternative source of information (ISI) or give another group (NSI) to belong to. Therefore the reason for conformity might be more complex than either or depending on the situation.

Check your understanding – Key terms

Conformity Internalisation Identification Compliance Informational social influence Normative social influence Nomothetic Idiographic Ethnocentric

Take it further

In class we will talk about others studies connected to social influence. Jennes (1932) originally conducted a study into social facilitation (effect of others on performance) however it is now regarded as a ground breaking study into ISI. The original focus was on how group discussion influenced the accuracy of judgement, but the most interesting result concerned how majority influence caused individual judgements to converge (move together). The task Jenness gave his participants, estimating the number of jellybeans in a jar; it had no obvious answer, it was difficult to assess the amount. Therefore the conformity produced was motivated by informational social influence, where individuals in uncertain situations look to others for guidance as to how to behave.

To investigate whether individual judgements of jellybeans in a jar was influenced by discussion in groups.

Participants made individual, private estimates of the number of jellybeans in a jar.
Participants then discussed their estimates either in a large group or in several smaller groups, discovering in the process that individuals differed widely in their estimates.
After discussion, group estimates were created.
Participants then made a second individual, private estimate.
Typicality of opinion was increased — individuals’ second private estimates tended to converge (move towards) their group estimate.
The average change of opinion was greater among females – women conformed more.

Conclusions

The judgements of people are affected by majority opinions, especially in ambiguous situations. Discussion is not effective in changing opinion, unless the individuals who enter into the discussion become aware that he opinions of others are different to theirs.

Although Jenness did not tell participants what the aims of the study were, the deception here was less severe than the other social influences studies. Therefore, the study could be regarding as more ethically sound.

How does Jenness’ study apply to the NSI and ISI? This was a laboratory-based experiment using an artificial, unusual situation. It therefore lacks mundane realism, as it’s not an everyday event to be asked how many sweets there are in a jar and so it does not reflect actual behaviour in real-life situations.

The study tells us little, if anything, about majority influence in non-ambiguous situations where people conform to obviously wrong answers (see Asch, 1955). Jenness’ study may involve NSI as well as ISI. After making initial individual estimates, participants then created group estimates, therefore their later second individual estimates may have moved towards their group estimates due to a desire for acceptance (NSI) as well as a desire to be correct (ISI).

Sherif (1935) Autokinetic Effect Experiment

Aim : Sherif (1935) conducted an experiment with the aim of demonstrating that people conform to group norms when they are put in an ambiguous situation.

Method : Sherif used a lab experiment to study conformity. He used the autokinetic effect – this is where a small spot of light (projected onto a screen) in a dark room will appear to move, even though it is still (i.e. it is a visual illusion). It was discovered that when participants were individually tested their estimates on how far the light moved varied considerably (e.g. from 20cm to 80cm).

The participants were then tested in groups of three. Sherif manipulated the composition of the group by putting together two people whose estimate of the light movement when alone was very similar, and one person whose estimate was very different. Each person in the group had to say aloud how far they thought the light had moved.

Results : Sherif found that over numerous estimates (trials) of the movement of light, the group converged to a common estimate. The person whose estimate of movement was greatly different to the other two in the group conformed to the view of the other two.

Sherif said that this showed that people would always tend to conform. Rather than make individual judgments they tend to come to a group agreement.

Conclusion : The results show that when in an ambiguous situation (such as the autokinetic effect), a person will look to others (who know more / better) for guidance (i.e. adopt the group norm). They want to do the right thing, but may lack the appropriate information. Observing others can provide this information. This is known as informational conformity.

Asch – experiments in conformity

Asch wanted to see what would happen if participants were exposed to NSI in a situation, where there could be no doubts about the correct answer to a question, an unambiguous task.

Either using your digital books (page 18) or the information below summarise Asch’s research or use the following link which also has a good write up. To summarise, outline research you need to make sure you can state the Aim of the research, the Method (eg lab experiment), Procedure, Results and Conclusion (AMPRC).

Asch (1951) conducted one of the most famous laboratory experiments examining conformity. He wanted to examine the extent to which social pressure from a majority, could affect a person to conform.

Asch’s sample consisted of 50 male students in America, who believed they were taking part in a vision test. Asch used a line judgement task, where he placed on real naïve participants in a room with seven confederates (actors), who had agreed their answers in advance. The real participant was deceived and was led to believe that the other seven people were also real participants. The real participant always sat second to last.

In turn, each person had to say out loud which line (A, B or C) was most like the target line in length.

Unlike Jennes and the Sheriff study , the correct answer was always unambiguous. 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 pps would conform to the majority view, even when the answer was clearly incorrect.

Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 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.

Asch interviewed 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 they would be ridiculed. This confirms that participants conformed due to NSI and the desire to fit in.

Your knowledge of experimental methodology will come in handy here ( http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Asch’s_Conformity_Study ).

Asch did variations beyond his first experiment which found 75% conformity and looked at factors which might increase or decrease this behaviour.

Group size – Asch found that there was little conformity when the majority consisted of just one or two confederates. However under the pressure of three confederates the proportion of conforming responses rose up to 30%. Increasing the majority beyond three had no real impact on conformity increasing. Indicating the size of the majority’s is important but only to a point.

The unanimity of the majority – when Asch added a supporter into the group conformity rates dropped. That is when a participant or confederate was told to give the right answer or agree with the participant who is unaware of the true aim this led to increased non conformity to the majority. In a further variation Asch involved a dissenter who gave a different view from the majority but also a wrong response, conformity dropped dramatically to only 9%.

The difficulty of the task – Asch made the differences between the line lengths much smaller, in a further variation. This made this task more difficult and increased conformity. It seems when the situation is more ambiguous we are more likely to conform.

Asch’s research is a study that proves the theory of ISI and NSI explanations of conformity. Therefore to start evaluation here start with the issues, what are the strengths and weaknesses of the research design, method, pps, procedure, data etc. Again search your text books for a piece of supporting or refuting evidence. The mask text book is good at proving supporting and refuting research. You get to use temporal validity here – child of our time.

Conformity to social roles

We will be working through the Zimbardo study, and examining the importance of identification with social roles as an explanation/excuse for behaviour. In preparation watch the following documentary.

The class PowerPoint is available here – http://www.pearltrees.com/laurashelley/pearl152203469

It is important to be able to summarise Zimbardo’s research, follow the formula of knowing the Aim, Method, Procedure, Results and Conclusion (AMPRC). A nice summary can be found here –

http://www.simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html

Zimbardo’s research offers an explanation of conformity to social role. It has both supporting and refuting evidence. Have a look through you text books, Simply psychology etc. and find one of each. Then AO3 using the issues and debates below. Once you have bullet pointed strengths and weaknesses have a go at using the exam technique – can you PEE or even better PEEC with the AO3 identified.

You will also find the original journal article on the Pearltree. This is a real stretch & challenge activity so if you feel up for it why not try reading your first Psychology journal article. http://www.pearltrees.com/laurashelley/pearl152203092

Reicher and Haslam (2006) did a similar but more ethical version of Zimbardo”s experiment, though they are very keen to say it is not a replication but just a similar test of the importance of identification with role. The following website is useful to get an overview of the experiment. On YouTube you can find clips of the experiment, it was a documentary shown on the BBC.

http://www.bbcprisonstudy.org/resources.php?p=119