To test his theory he brought male undergraduates, one at a time, into a room with eight other people who were passed off as fellow participants Asch, Participants in the Asch conformity experiment were asked to call out which line — A, B or C — was the same length as the reference line. On half of the trials they called out the line that was too short, and on the other half the line that was too long.
The real experimental participant in the Asch conformity experiment, who knew nothing of this, was actually the sixth to call out their answer after five other confederates of the experimenter had given the wrong answer. The results of the Asch conformity experiment were fascinating, and not at all what Asch had been expecting:. Intrigued as to why participants had gone along with the majority, Asch interviewed them after the experiment. To demonstrate the power of conformity in groups.
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. 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.
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. 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. Later studies have also supported this finding, suggesting that having social support is an important tool in combating conformity.
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. Main menu. Subjects Shop Courses Live Jobs board.
View shopping cart. View mytutor2u. Account Shopping cart Logout. Explore Psychology Psychology Search. Explore Blog Reference library Collections Shop. Share: Facebook Twitter Email Print page. 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. The clip below is not from the original experiment in , but an acted version for television from the s. In further trials, Asch , changed the procedure i. Asch 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. Increasing the size of the majority beyond three did not increase the levels of conformity found. Brown and Byrne suggest that people might suspect collusion if the majority rises beyond three or four. In another variation of the original experiment, Asch broke up the unanimity total agreement of the group by introduced a dissenting confederate. This was supported in a study by Allen and Levine In their version of the experiment, they introduced a dissenting disagreeing confederate wearing thick-rimmed glasses — thus suggesting he was slightly visually impaired.
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. When the comparison lines e. When we are uncertain, it seems we look to others for confirmation.
The more difficult the task, the greater the conformity. 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. McLeod, S.
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