Asch Conformity

Psychologists have long been interested in conformity as a powerful influence on our behaviour, making us behave in ways that can often conflict with our attitudes and moral and ethical principles.

Asch was interested in how strong the urge was to social conformity. He believed that people are manipulated by suggestion, where a person’s judgment of a situation can be changed without their knowledge of it being changed first.

When confronted by majority opinion, a person appears to lose their confidence and capacity to go against group pressure, and will instead conform.

Sherif demonstrated that people will look to others for guidance and answer in line with the majority. Participants were tested on their estimation of how far a stationary

In the control condition the real participant would always state the correct line (majority of the time).

The experiment was stopped if the participant grew suspicious or had appeared to have guessed the aims of the research. This however only happened in a few cases and the results were not included.

In the control condition, participants named the correct line 98% of the time. There was a significant difference between the correct answers stated in the control condition compared to in the critical condition.

In the 12 critical trials 63% of participants would state the correct line, but nearly 37% of participants conformed to the wrong answer.

73% conformed at least once, but 26% never conformed. The conformity levels ranged from 17% on the first critical trial, to 54% on the 4th critical trial, and on the twelfth and final critical trial, the overall conformity level was

Asch also noted that an important finding came from his research. In over two thirds of trials, participants remained independent and didn't conform to the majority wrong answer. In those who participated it was agreed that independence is far preferable to conformity.

This demonstrates individual differences in response to group pressure and shows that independence can override the inclination to submit to the majority viewpoint.

A strength of the methodology used by Asch is that laboratory experiments provide findings with good scientific validity. They provided objective, measurable and quantitative data and used a clear IV, which would be the majority opinion, and a clear DV, which would be the percentage of participants conforming. This means that the findings drawn from the use of this method also have good internal