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Core studies summary Asch (1955) opinions and social pressure
Aims and context (Put aims of study & background history)
The aim of the study was to see if p’s would yield (conform) to majority
social influence & give incorrect answers in a situation where the correct
answers were always obvious. Asch was investigating what would happen
if p’s were exposed to normative social influence (we conform as we want
to be liked and fit in) in a group situation when the answers were obvious.
The researchers wanted to find out how and how much do social forces
constrain people’s opinions and attitudes. Asch aimed to investigate the
effects of group pressure on individuals in unambiguous situation as
previous research had focused on ambiguous situations; he wanted to find
out if when confronted with an obviously incorrect answer, whether
individuals would give an answer which perpetuated this error (conformed)
or whether they would give an independent response.
Context:
Asch comments on how Charcot stated that only hysterical people could be
hypnotised, these were people who demonstrated strange symptoms with
no bodily cause, e.g. deafness or paralysis. But however, Bernheim &
Liebault demonstrated that they could put normal people in a hypnotic
trance. Bernheim said hypnosis was an extreme form of a normal
psychological process known as SUGGESTIBILITY.
It was already known that repeating instructions to people who were awake
could make them respond involuntarily e.g. their bodies would sway, or
they would feel warm.
At the start of the 1900’s social psychology was born, the first experiments
followed like this: college students were asked to give their opinions
concerning certain matters, some time later they were asked again to give
their opinions BUT they were told of what the opinions of most people were
first. These studies produced the same result, given opinions against their
own, these students shifted their opinions to agree with the majority. The
sheer weight of numbers or authority was enough to change people’s
opinions even when no good arguments were given for these opinions!!
Asch was interested in how people submit to manipulation by suggestion or
due to the power of authority and that any idea can be sold or unsold,
without needing to talk about its merits. He wondered if it was possible to
change a person’s judgment of a situation or object without first changing
his knowledge or assumptions about it.
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SHERIF (1935): Sherif did research on the autokinetic effect this is when a
still point of light in the dark appears to move, the p’s had to estimate how
far it moved on their own at first and then in groups.
When alone, p’s developed their own individual norms BUT in the group
judgements became closer and closer to one another until a group norm
was established - an estimate they all agreed on. When re-tested alone p’s
answered using the group norm; they appeared to have internalised the
group norm. To conclude p’s were influenced by the estimates of others.
Estimates became the same i.e. converged as they used information from
other p’s to help them.
Jenness (1932) asked p’s to estimate the number of beans in a bottle, first
on their own, then in a group. When asked alone again after being in a
group, individuals shifted their opinion towards the group estimate rather
than their own.
Procedures (What did the Psychologists do to the participants?)
 A group of 7-9 young men, all college students were placed in a
classroom for a supposed psychological experiment on visual
judgement.
 The experimenter told them that they would be comparing lengths of
lines.
 They are shown 2 large white cards. On one is a vertical black line
the standard line, on another card are 3 vertical lines of various
lengths.
 P’s had to choose the line that is the same length as the line on the
standard card.
 One of the 3 lines is of the same length, the others are very different,
the difference ranges from 3 quarters of an inch to an inch and 3
quarters.
 P’s have to announce their answers out loud to the group in the order
they have been seated in.
 Unknown to the true naïve participant the other students are
stooges/confederates of the experimenter. They have been
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instructed on 12 out of 18 trials called the critical trials to give the
wrong answer.
 In total Asch tested 123 male college students (participants).
 The participant is placed in position in which while he is giving the
correct answers he is in an uncomfortable minority of 1 opposed by a
unanimous (together) opinion of a group of his peers.
Perspective : Social
Method: Laboratory study & Interview at end to find out why they
conformed/resisted
3 advantages of the methodology: Sample (e.g. representative)
Internal & external validity/internal & external reliability/ethics & any other
issues:
1. High internal validity because it was conducted in a controlled
environment & Asch was able to manipulate & control conditions so
that he could measure the effects directly e.g. number of incorrect
answers (i.e. conforming) / average conformity level of p’s over
critical trials measured by percentage e.g. 36.8% / percentage of p’s
that conformed / percentage of p’s that never conformed.
2. External reliability - Asch in variations of his experiment still showed
that p’s conform under group pressure, e.g. if a task was made
harder then conformity levels went up. Crutchfield (1955) showed p’s
still conformed even when not face to face.
3. Sample were of a similar age as all college students, so this acted as
a control, and it showed most p’s conformed.
4. Experiment - standardised procedures followed, means the study can
be replicated so the results can be tested e.g. number of trials/place
of testing/behaviour of confederates etc.
3 disadvantages of this methodology: Sample bias/validity – internal &
external/reliability internal & external/ethics/gender bias/cultural bias & any
other issues:
1. Sample - all male college students so low population validity in terms
of you can’t generalise results to other types of people e.g. older
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male adults. Also gender bias as no females were used.
(Androcentric/Ethnocentric)
2. Internal validity could be lowered by demand characteristics where
p’s look at the situation and guess how they should react so
behaviour is not telling truth i.e. it is not valid. Experimenter may also
expect p’s to behave in a certain way and this is transmitted to them called expectancy effects.
3. Low mundane realism, this means is the task in the study like real
life? Well, no so it has low mundane realism as when we conform we
do it in different situations to this e.g. we conform due to group
discussion.
4. Gender bias - no females used.
5. Ethics - participants were misled, told the study was about visual
judgements and again this was rubbish, it was about conformity.
However, it is doubtful that being misled like this would have led to
worrying psychological effects.
Findings and conclusions of the study:
 Individuals matching the lines without any group around them will
make a mistake less than 1% of the time.
 Under group pressure the p’s agreed with the wrong majority view on
36.8% of the selections/critical trials.
 Some p’s went along with the majority nearly all the time.
 Other p’s stayed independent and true to their own judgements
throughout the trials.
 At the end of the study p’s were interviewed. Some independent p’s
were just really confident in their own judgements, others believed
the majority were correct but they continued to dissent (disagree) as
they felt that it was their obligation to do so.
 The conforming p’s quickly came to the agreement that they were
wrong and everyone else was right.
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 Some of the conforming p’s thought that the majority was wrong due
to some optical illusion but still conformed!
 All p’s underestimated how many times they conformed.
 Some p’s thought that they themselves were deficient in some way
which they should hide so went along with the majority.
Conclusion:
Asch concluded that there was a strong tendency for conformity. He found
tendency for conformity was so strong that well-meaning young people
would conform this is a matter of concern.
Alternative and complementary research findings:
(See exemplar question for more information)
Alternative:
Crutchfield in conformity studies found participants with high intelligence
scores and leadership abilities showed less conformity than others, so
individual differences are important, which Asch didn’t emphasise.
Furman & Duke (1988) found lack of confidence makes you more likely to
conform. The publicly stated preferences of people who weren’t experts in
music were affected by confederates who gave the opposite music
preferences.
Perrin & Spencer (1980) replicated (repeated) Asch’s study and found only
1 conforming response in 396 trials. They said cultural changes over the
last 50 years had led to a reduction in conformity. Also the students were
from precise disciplines like chemistry and maths.
Smith & Bond (1998) in a review of 31 studies state that conformity is less
likely in Britain & the USA so goes against Asch’s findings but more likely
in collectivist cultures like Japan/China.
Complementary:
Crutchfeld (1955) arranged p’s in booths, they had to judge which shape
was bigger, they could see lights on a display which they incorrectly
thought was other p’s responses but the experimenter controlled these
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displays, conformity levels were similar to Asch 30%. Also like in Asch’s
study variations, when tasks were made harder p’s conformed more.
Perrin & Spencer (1981) used youths on probation as p’s and their
probation officers were confederates, the conformity levels were similar to
those Asch found in 1952. Where the costs of not conforming were thought
to be high, conformity effects happened.
Nicholson et al (1985) showed conformity levels were linked to what was
happening in society at the time, in 1982 there was the Falklands war when
Britain went to war with Argentina over who had control of the Falkland
islands, here p’s were more conforming than p’s who were tested in 1981.
The war contributed to society’s cohesiveness at the time (we all stick
together) which led to higher degrees of conformity.
Zimbardo et al (1973) did a prison simulation study and found ordinary
people conformed extremely to the roles given of guards or prisoner and
guards became aggressive in their roles, punishing the prisoners by
continually lining them up for counts and being verbally aggressive. They
made prisoners clean out the toilet with their hands!
Evaluation points of the study:
Strengths:
 Valid - seems to show how strong social influence is to empower us
to conform.
 Reliable research method - a lab experiment means the study can be
replicated (repeated) and same results found. This gives confidence
in results.
 Cause and effect can be established with this type of well controlled
study.
 Quantitative data generated, which can be analysed and shows clear
effects e.g. impressive to say that 74% of p’s conformed at least
once.
 Control over variables – variables like age/setting/seating position all
controlled, so variables which could affect results are controlled or
eliminated again allowing us to be more confident in results.
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 Asch generated qualitative data through interviewing p’s to see why
they conformed, this is useful data e.g. p’s conformed as they wanted
to be liked (normative social influence) and also because they
thought the others were right, called informational social influence.
Weaknesses:
 Artificiality of study - conformity found under laboratory conditions
with meaningless stimuli e.g. line judgement.
 High conformity rates may just reflect society at that time - in the
1950’s there was a fear of communist societies and a witch hunt
went on in America, where communist sympathisers were trialled and
jailed. But America is less conformist now.
 Replication of Asch’s study has found varying rates of conformity in
recent times and when studies have been done cross culturally.
 Outdated study doesn’t tell us about society today?
 There will always be individual differences where not all people will
conform so it doesn’t tell us that conformity is a universal human
behaviour.
 Demand characteristics - the situation is formal (lab. experiment) and
the participant may go along with everyone else thus lowering the
internal validity i.e. that the IV led to a change in the DV.
 Androcentric or gender biased - focuses on males and ignores how
females would react.
 Overemphasises nurture - that the environment through social
pressure controls our behaviour, ignores nature side of the debate
e.g. how our genes could influence us to conform.
 Cultural bias - done in America can’t apply findings to other cultures
which may be more independent.
 Ethics – Deception / lack of informed consent / hard for them to
withdraw would be embarrassing / protection of participants - p’s
would have felt uncomfortable, unnerved and stressed should they
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be put through this?
 Ethnocentric - an American cultural group is used to try to show how
a universal human behaviour can be applied to other groups this isn’t
necessarily correct.
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