Defining and Understanding Conformity
CONFORMITY (MAJORITY INFLUENCE)
Introduction
Broadly, conformity can be defined as ‘yielding to group pressure’, and for this reason it is also referred to as majority influence. There have been many experimental studies of conformity. The most well known is a series of experiments conducted in the 1950s by an American social psychologist called Solomon Asch.
Solomon Asch
How did Solomon Asch study conformity?
Asch argued that conformity can best be studied by seeing if people agree or disagree with others who give an obviously wrong answer on tasks with an obvious and unambiguous answer. In his original 1951 study,
Asch devised 20 slightly different line judgement tasks. On these tasks, participants have to say which of the 3 lines labelled A, B, and C is the same length as the line to the left of them, as shown below.
Asch conducted a pilot study to ensure that the tasks actually did have an obvious and unambiguous solution. In the pilot study, he tested 26 participants one at a time on each of the 20 tasks. So, with 36 people each doing 20 tasks, a total of 720 judgements were made. Asch found a wrong answer was given only 3 times. Therefore, participants got the
answer right 717/720 times (99.6%), and this showed that the tasks were very easy and did have one obviously correct answer and two obviously incorrect answers.
Asch then carried out the study itself. He wanted to see how much conformity male students at the university he worked at would show.
Some of the participants (Ps) in the pilot study were asked if they would act as stooges (or confederates). Asch told them that they would be doing the tasks again, but this time in a group, with each person saying out loud their answers. The stooges were told that they would be seated around a table, and that there would be one other person (called the naïve participant) who was completely unaware that they were stooges, and that the study was about conformity.
The line judgement task being carried out by
Introduction
Broadly, conformity can be defined as ‘yielding to group pressure’, and for this reason it is also referred to as majority influence. There have been many experimental studies of conformity. The most well known is a series of experiments conducted in the 1950s by an American social psychologist called Solomon Asch.
Solomon Asch
How did Solomon Asch study conformity?
Asch argued that conformity can best be studied by seeing if people agree or disagree with others who give an obviously wrong answer on tasks with an obvious and unambiguous answer. In his original 1951 study,
Asch devised 20 slightly different line judgement tasks. On these tasks, participants have to say which of the 3 lines labelled A, B, and C is the same length as the line to the left of them, as shown below.
Asch conducted a pilot study to ensure that the tasks actually did have an obvious and unambiguous solution. In the pilot study, he tested 26 participants one at a time on each of the 20 tasks. So, with 36 people each doing 20 tasks, a total of 720 judgements were made. Asch found a wrong answer was given only 3 times. Therefore, participants got the
answer right 717/720 times (99.6%), and this showed that the tasks were very easy and did have one obviously correct answer and two obviously incorrect answers.
Asch then carried out the study itself. He wanted to see how much conformity male students at the university he worked at would show.
Some of the participants (Ps) in the pilot study were asked if they would act as stooges (or confederates). Asch told them that they would be doing the tasks again, but this time in a group, with each person saying out loud their answers. The stooges were told that they would be seated around a table, and that there would be one other person (called the naïve participant) who was completely unaware that they were stooges, and that the study was about conformity.
The line judgement task being carried out by