Describe & Evaluate Research into Conformity

Describe & Evaluate Research Into Conformity

Soloman Asch (1956) studied 123 male American undergraduates to see how the lone 'real' participant would react to the behaviour of the confederates. Participants were seated in a room of 6-10 people where they were the only 'real' participant the remaining others were confederates. The participants were then shown 3 lines and had to compare it to a standard. They were then asked individually to state which line out of the 3 was the same length as the standard. They all took turns answering however after 2 or 3 rounds it was the confederates job to all say the wrong answer and the behaviour of the 'real' participant was then noted. Asch then found on average that 36.7% of people conformed to the confederates answers, however he also found that 25% of all people did not conform. From this he concluded that most people conform to others for 3 main reasons;

1. Distortion of perception - a small number of participants came to see the lines in the same was as the majority

2. Distortion of judgement - They felt doubt about the accuracy of their judgement and therefore yielded to the majority view.

3. Distortion of action - The majority of participants who conformed continued privately to trust their own perceptions and judgements but changed their public behaviour giving incorrect answers to avoid disapproval from other group members.

One weakness of Asch's study is that it lacks validity. It is possible that these findings are unique to one culture particularly as all the participants were American. Not only this but the study was carried out in the 50's, the era of McCarthyism. From this you can therefore say that Asch's study lacks population and historical validity. You could also say that it lacks ecological validity as all the participants