Study 1 - Asch (1955)
Opinions and social pressure
Field of psychology: Social
1. CONTEXT AND AIMS
Context
A few key terms…
What is conformity?
In what way are the groups above conforming?
What do we call the opposite of conformity? ______________________________________
Because an individual is often influenced by the way the
majority of people think or act, we call this majority
influence. However, just because a person goes along with
the majority in public, it does not mean that they have
changed their private beliefs. If someone only alters their behaviour to conform they are
showing public compliance. Someone who alters both their behaviour and their beliefs
would be showing private acceptance.
“Life in society requires
consensus as an
indispensable condition”
Conformity is an important area for psychologists to investigate, as
the way that we behave when in groups can have a massive impact
on our behaviour. Conformity has many real world applications such as jury decisionmaking and behaviour in classrooms.
Solomon Asch
What did Jenness (1932) do and find?
An issue with Jenness’s study is that it is limited as the participants were specifically asked to produce a group
estimate, rather than just observing whether they would produce similar estimate. However, these results
suggest that in an ambiguous situation, we look to others to get a reasonable answer.
How did Sherif (1935) use the autokinetic effect to investigate conformity?
Sherif’s study is an improvement over Jenness’s as the participants were not specifically told to produce a group
estimate. His participants arrived at a group norm under their own volition.
An issue with the studies above is that they are both ambiguous situations, where there is no clear correct
answer. It may be plausible that in these situations, conforming to a group norm is a sensible course of action.
However, in 1955 there was little scientific evidence to suggest if and how people would conform in a situation
where there was no ambiguity, and a clear correct answer.
Asch also took issue with the methodology of these studies:
“confronted with opinions contrary to their own, many subjects apparently shifted
their judgment in the direction of the views of the majorities ... there is some reason
to wonder whether it was not the investigators who, in their enthusiasm for a
theory, were suggestible, and whether gullible subjects were providing answers
they thought good subjects were expected to give.”
Think back to your work on research methods. What terms can we use to sum up Asch’s criticisms?
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Aims
What was Asch’s aim?
2. PROCEDURES
Asch carried out a number of variations of the same experiment. You need to know in-depth procedures for the
baseline study, and also some of the variations. Use the textbook page 75-76, and the original text.
BASELINE STUDY
Number and make-up of
participants
Research method used
Experimental design
Independent variable
Dependant variable
Outline the procedure
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The participants were asked to take part in a “vision experiment”.
However, the real aim of the study was to investigate conformity.
In each trial, there was one naïve participant and six to eight
confederates (or stooges). These were people who knew the aims
of the study and acted in the way that the experimenters told
them.
The group are shown two large white cards. One has a single line
on it, which is to be matched in length to one of three lines of
different length on the other card (see below).
The group of participants verbally reports their visual judgments
in order. This task is repeated 18 times.
The last but one participant in each group is the ‘naïve’
participant. The confederates have been told to give the same
obviously wrong answer on 12 of the 18 trials. These 12 trials
are called critical trials.
The participants could react on one of two ways. They could
either verbally report the same answer as the rest of the
participants (an obviously wrong answer) i.e. conform, or they
could report a different answer to the rest of the participants (the
correct answer), i.e. not conform.
After the experiment, the participants were debriefed and told
the true aim of the study and interviewed about their responses
and behaviour.
Naive participant
VARIATIONS ON THE BASELINE PROCEDURE
Outline the procedures for the following variations (you only need to describe how this procedure is different
from the baseline, you don’t need to go into as much detail)
The size of the majority
A truthful partner
An inaccurate partner
A partner who changes his mind
A partner who leaves
Asch also investigated the effect of gradual majority influence. In this procedure, the confederates all began by
giving the correct answer, but then one by one began giving wrong answers, until eventually the participants
was alone and the group unanimously against him.
He also investigated the effect on the degree of wrongness of the majority. He varied the discrepancy between
the standard line and the other lines, with the aim of reaching a point where the error was so glaringly obvious,
that no-one would every subject would be compelled to give the right answer.
Q1: Why was the naïve participant always second from last?
Q2: Why did the confederates not give a wrong answer on every trial?
3. FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS
Similarly to the procedures, you need to know the findings and conclusions from the baseline study, and also
from some of the variations.
Findings
In a control study carried out before this experiment, it was found that less than 1% of people made errors when
carrying out this task when by themselves. This suggests that this task is ______________________.
The baseline study
Asch found that participants gave wrong answers 36.8% of the time. This
means that of all the critical trials, 36.8% of responses were wrong
(however, it also means that 63.2% of responses were right).
However, there was a considerable amount of difference between
individuals with regards to how much they conformed.
 25% of participants never gave a wrong answer once i.e. they did
not conform. (Conversely, this means that 75% of participants
conformed at least once.)
 At the other extreme, some participants agreed with the majority
on nearly every critical trial.
Regardless of whether the participant conformed or did not conform, their
behaviour was constant.
Those who didn’t agree with the majority, tended not to agree with them
consistently. Asch states “Those who strike out on the path to independence,
Graph showing the number of correct
do not, as a rule, succumb to the majority”.
answers when alone (top line) and when
 Interviews with the participants after the experiment showed that
with the confederates (bottom line)
independent individuals
o had “staunch confidence in their own judgment”
o had the “capacity to recover from doubt and to re-establish their equilibrium”
o felt it was “their obligation to call the play as they saw it”
Those who did agree with the majority, tended to agree consistently. As Asch says “Those who chose the path of
compliance are unable to free themselves, and the ordeal is prolonged”.
 Compliant (conforming) individuals
o believed that “I am wrong, they are right”
o conformed so as “not to spoil the results"
o suspected the majority were “sheep” following the first responding participant
o thought the majority were “victim of an optical illusion”
o thought they were ‘deficient’ in comparison to the rest of the group, and this deficiency’ needed
to be hidden at all costs
 Compliant individuals also tended to under estimate the frequency with which they conformed.
Variations on the baseline study
The size of the majority
A truthful partner
An inaccurate partner
A partner who changes his mind
A partner who leaves
Gradual Majority Influence
Asch found that as long as the participant had at least one other person on his side, he was nearly always
independent and gave the correct answer. However, as soon as he found himself alone, the tendency to
conform to the majority rose abruptly.
Degree of wrongness
Surprisingly, even when the difference between the correct answer and wrong answer was 7 inches (and so
there is no doubt what the correct answer is), some participants still conformed and went with the majority in
giving the wrong answer!
Conclusions
What is the main conclusion from all of the findings above? (Baseline and variations)
What can be concluded about the effect of the size of the majority and the effect of a dissenter?
However:
“That we have found the tendency to conformity in our society so strong that reasonably
intelligent and well meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern…
Yet anyone inclined to draw too pessimistic conclusions from this report would do well to remind
himself that the capacities for independence are not to be underestimated…those who
participated in this challenging experiment agreed nearly without exception that
independence was preferable to conformity”.
What can this study tell us about resisting conformity?
4. EVALUATING THE METHODOLOGY (pg 110)
Method: This study took place in a laboratory. The advantages of this are:_________________________________
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However: _____________________________________________________________________________________
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Reliability: Larsen (1974) replicated Asch’s experiment and found that the conformity levels were a lot lower
than what Asch found. Similarly, Perrin and Spencer (1980) conducted a similar experiment and found that out of
396 trials, only one participant conformed. What does this suggest about the reliability of this experiment?
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Validity: One of Asch’s criticisms of Sherif and Jenness was that the participants in those studies may have been
led to act a certain way by the experimenter through investigator effects. Could the same criticism be made of
Asch’s study? __________________________________________________________________________________
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Was the line comparison task a valid test of conformity? Would different results have been gained if the
participants had been given a different task? ________________________________________________________
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How ecologically valid was this study? ______________________________________________________________
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The participants had to say their answer out loud in front of strangers? Could this have affected the levels of
conformity? ___________________________________________________________________________________
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Sampling: The sampling method used was “volunteer/self selected”. What issues could this raise for this study?
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Was the sample biased? __________________________________________________________________________
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Ethical issues: Were there any ethical issues raised by this study? _______________________________________
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5. CRITICALLY ASSESS WITH REFERENCE TO ALTERNATIVE EVIDENCE
Look back at the studies by Sherif and Jenness. Do these findings support, contradict, or develop Asch’s results?
As mentioned above, both Perrin and Spencer (1980) repeated Asch’s
experiment, but found a much lower level of conformity (1 person
conformed out of 396 trials). A number of explanations have been
developed to explain why Asch found such a high level of conformity in
his study.
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It has been argued by some that Asch’s study was a child of it’s time.
1950s America was a highly conformist society, with the anti-communist
McCarthyism fostering an environment which was distrustful of outsiders.
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However, it has also been argued that Asch’s study is more realistic and valid, as the study by Perrin and
Spencer used science students as its participants. It may be that they may have felt more confident
about their ability to measure lines, and so conformed less.
However, a replication of the study by Nicholson et al (1985) found that 32% of British students and 38% of US
students conformed at least once. This provides some support for Asch’s original findings.
All of the participants used in Asch’s study were men. However, there is evidence that there are differences in
the way men and women conform to social influence. Eagly (1978) performed a meta-analysis, analysing the
results from many studies into conformity. She found that women are more conforming than men in group
pressure situations. Can you think of a reason why this would be the case?
Asch’s study only used participants from the USA. What did Bond and Smith (1996) do, what did they find, and
what does this suggest about Asch’s original study? (pg77)
Another issue with Asch’s study is that we can not tell whether the participants were
showing public compliance or private acceptance (internalisation). Berns et al (2005) gave
participants a similar task to Asch’s experiment, and used an fMRI brain scan to observe
brain activity. When the participants were subjected to social pressure to conform, the
most active parts of the brain were the parts associated with perception, rather than the
parts used for making judgements. This suggests that the Asch task actually changes the
way that participants perceive the world. However, it might be possible that the
participants were double checking what they thought they saw. Also, they found that the
part of the brain related to fear was activated, suggesting that participants conform out of
a fear of rejection by the group.
What did Boel et al (2006) do, and find, and what does this suggest about Asch’s original study? (pg 77)
Use three colours to highlight research that supports, contradicts, or develops Asch’s research (some may be
more than one colour).