Describe and Evaluate Studies on Conformity. (Key study Solomon Asch)

Odesanya Atilola

Name: Odesanya Atilola

Class: AS Psychology group1

Key Skills Assignment Topic: Describe and Evaluate Studies on Conformity. (Key study Solomon Asch)

Lecturer: Kim Weeks

Conformity is defined as a change in a person’s opinion or behaviour as a result of real or imagined pressure from a group of people. This pressure to act like other people sometimes, despite our true feelings and desires, is common in our everyday lives. This is due to implied and spoken rules of the situation.

People conform due to two different reasons. People conform either by informational influence or normative influence. Deutsch and Gerard (1955) gave a definition on informational and normative social influence:

Informational social influence is a situation whereby the individual has a desire to be right in the knowledge and judgement of others, shown in Sherif’s study. People change their opinion because of a number of different reasons including status and roles and familiarity. Informational influence leads usually to internalisation, where what a person believes actually changes. While

Normative social influence is basically a situation whereby an individual has the urge or the want to be liked and accepted by others, as shown by Asch’s experiment. Normative does not change private opinion; it affects public opinion because of compliance, where people, even though they don’t believe in it, comply for the above reason of wanting to be accepted.

Experiments on conformity

A very common case study used in conformity is the experiment of ‘ Solomon Asch (1955)’.

Aim: Asch questioned Sherif’s results because of the fact that the stimulus (the auto-kinetic effect) was very unambiguous and therefore the answer was uncertain. Asch therefore decided to investigate whether people would be so willing to conform if the stimulus was not ambiguous and the right answer was obvious, but people would give the wrong answer to conform.

Procedure: Asch showed the participant two cards. One was a standard line and the other was a comparison line. He told them ...

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Experiments on conformity

A very common case study used in conformity is the experiment of ‘ Solomon Asch (1955)’.

Procedure: Asch showed the participant two cards. One was a standard line and the other was a comparison line. He told them to match the comparison line with the standard line. He used 7-9 confederates. He instructed them to give the same wrong answer unanimously on 12 out of the 18 trials. All participants were told to seat around a table with the naïve participant answering last but one. They were told to say out their answers.

Findings: During the critical trials, 32% of the naïve participants changed their response to the wrong answer so as to fit in the group. Other result also states that 75% of the naïve participant conformed at least once while 25% never conformed.

Conclusion: Asch concluded that a majority could have influence on the individual. However after interviewing the participant, Asch concluded that people conform for different reasons. Some because of normative influence whereas others began to doubt their own perception and changed their own answer thereby exhibiting informational influence.

EVALUATION

Unlike Sherif who gave us no clear measure on how people conform, Asch did. Asch gave an exact measure on how people conform in certain situations be it under pressure or fear of rejection.

One of the main criticisms of Asch’s studies was that the participants were conforming because they were reluctant or embarrassed to expose their private views in a face-to-face situation. Consequently, the level of conformity should decrease if they are allowed to write their answers down where there is no face-to-face contact between group members. This suggests that many people engage in public compliance rather then private acceptance. Conformity therefore does no necessarily mean agreement.

Also, the research should be made broader not just to a particular sex as in his experiment he used male college students. The research looks inconclusive as you cant judge the females results based on the male college students response. Thus the study can’t be generalized. It was also observed that the results may have been influenced at the time and place of the experiment, this is because at the time when Asch did his research, it was in the McCarthyism era of America, which was a very conformist time in America and being different was certainly not desirable. This may have affected Asch’s experiment. So, during the Seventies, Perrin and Spencer (1980,1981) did a repeat of Asch’s study in England. They found very little conformity, leading them to think that the Asch paradigm was ‘a child of its time’. But, one reason for the lack of conformity in their version of the experiment may just be because they used engineering students, who were trained to believe the importance of their own measurements and therefore would be more confident in their own opinion, rather than the need to conform.

Asch experiment lacked ecological validity. Ecological validity is defined as a type of validity in which we can’t generalize our psychological findings to real life settings. Asch’s experiment was carried out in a laboratory which is often not typical of the sort of thing we do everyday

. He also used confederates. Thus, we can’t generalize how people would behave in real life since they are not acting naturally. It has also been identified that people find it difficult to act naturally in an experiment.

Also, the research is cultural bias. Cultural bias in the sense that the result Asch found on conformity cannot be generalized to other races.

However, the research had a lot of ethical issues involves as the participants were not briefed at all. They had little or no information, which should not be so. Do psychologists tend to bother what happens after the research has been carried out on the naïve participant? Some of the naive participant reported feeling quite stressed on the critical trials, which had a psychological harm on them. Asch also deceived them regarding the experiment true purpose which then pops the question “Do psychologist use deception to have their researches carried out?” or should I say, “Are they justified?”

Above all, as an upcoming psychologist, this research has further broadened my knowledge on how indidividuals react in certain situation and has taking me one-step closer in understanding the world.

References:

Richard Gross and Geoff Rolls (2003) Essential AS Psychology for AQA (A)
(23rd October 2007)

Peer Reviews

Here's what a star student thought of this essay

sydneyhopcroft

21st of Aug 2012

Quality of writing

The Quality of Written Communication is very good. From both a Psychology perspective and an English perspective the candidate uses language confidently and fluidly. There is no cause for concern with regards to abiding by the rules of Standard English as the candidate's grammar, spelling and punctuation are all accurate, and the use of complex psychological terminology applied appropriately indicates a candidate who writes with flair and knowledge about the language of Psychology.

Level of analysis

The Level of Analysis is typically prescriptive of a Psychology answer, but this candidate does offer a very good analysis of studies into conformity, primarily citing Asch with a good level of detail. The candidate provides an array of strengths and weaknesses pertaining to he study and links them back to how valid it makes the results about conformity. The extra marks that so many candidates miss is in that last point - linking the strength/weakness back to the focus of the question. There is usually a mark for identifying an evaluation point; saying why it is a strength/weakness to the study in question; and then linking back to how this affects the validity of the behaviour being questioned.

Response to question

This is a very good essay that goes to explicit depth when talking about conformity, it's presence in social situations, and how it affects our behaviour. They also take the time to differentiate between informative social influence and normative social influence. Here though, the informative social influence definition is a little ambiguous and could confuse non-psychology students, so I'd recommend taking a look at that and ensuring that you make it clear that the conformity is a result of information given to you by others. Elsewhere, I like the use of studies as a way of validating the evaluation, and also the clear instructions as to how Asch conducted his study (the candidate could be even clearer about the actual procedure though, and what was shown on the cards e.g. Line A, B, C and X). There is a good discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of Asch's study, creating a balanced analysis to aid the candidate to answering the question.

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