Post by TheWeeMan on May 29, 2004 19:26:31 GMT 1
Craig has asked me if I have anything on Asch. Here's a little something I've just put togther. Hope it is of use.
Solomon E. Asch 1907 - 1996
Solomon E. Asch was born in Warsaw, Poland, on September 14, 1907. He came to the United States in 1920 and received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1932. He met some amazing people, as his mentor there was the gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer. When he joined Swarthmore College he spent 19 years working with another notable gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Kohler. In his own experiments into conformity Asch was assisted by a young Stanley Milgram, who with his studies into obedience to authority was to later achieve worldwide fame (and a lot of slagging within psychology regards ethics. But you are absolutely right Stan! Take your countrymen's disgraceful antics in Iraq for example. )
What is conformity?
Conformity is a change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.
Asch said that conformity should be measured in terms of our tendency to give the wrong answer on a task where the solution is obvious or unambigious. . This was because of a criticism levelled at an earlier study done by Sherif (1935) called the Autokinetic Effect. In this, Asch and others thought the task was ambiguous, and that this ambiguity influenced the degree of individual conformity shown.
Asch and Conformity
ASCH, S.E. Studies of independence and conformity: a minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs, 1956, 70.
Aim
The aim of these studies was to investigate conformity in a group situation.
Method
Laboratory experiment
Independent variable
There were various manipulations of the IV. Main one involved stooges giving a wrong answer on the size of a line at particular points (critical trials) during the experiment. Other manipulations included the changing the size of the group; whether a stooge (dissenter) disagreed with the majority; and whether the adjudging line task took place in private or public.
Initially in a pilot study Asch tested 36 participants INDIVIDUALLY on 20 presentations of stimuli like the one below. When asked to compare and identify the standard line with the three A, B, C comparison lines only three mistakes were made in 720 trials (0.42 error rate). The purpose of the pilot was to ascertain that the task was both simple and unambiguous. This procedure in social psychology is known as the Asch Paradigm.
designweb.otago.ac.nz/grant/psyc/BARS.GIF
[/img]
Some of his participants were than asked to take part in the main experiment, but this time in a group. They were told that the group was to have a ‘naïve’ participant who would not know that they were stooges.
On certain critical trials, of which there were 12, Asch secretly signalled the stooges to give the same wrong answer. These were interspersed by 6 neutral (right answer) trials, giving 18 trials in all. 50 naïve participants were recruited.
Dependent variable
Occurrence of conformity response by naïve participants when the critical trials occurred.
Procedure
Naïve participant is brought into lab with 7-9 stooges
Seated last, or last but one, at a straight or round table
Asked to make a judgment about line length.
In 12 of 18 trials stooges gave wrong answer. NB DV is whether participant concurs.
Results
Asch found a mean conformity rate of 32% over all trials.
No one conformed on all of the critical trials
Of the 50 naïve participants who took part 13 (20%) never conformed
1 conformed on eleven of 12 critical trials
38 conformed at least once on 12 critical trials
In further studies using his Asch Paradigm he discovered other variables that affect group conformity
Size of group: as group size increases to 3 others, conformity increases. After that, little change. One naïve participant, one stooge 3% conformity. One naïve participant, two stooges 14% conformity. One naïve participant, three stooges 32% conformity (confirmed results of original experiment above).
Unanimity: Presence of one dissenter amongst the stooges decreases conformity immensely
Privacy: The more private the setting the naïve participant is allowed to give their answer (e.g. writing it down/behind a screen) the less conformity there was (12.5%)
Why?
When asked why they had conformed naïve participants reported the following:
To convey a good impression of themselves to the experimenter.
Not to upset the experimenter.
Some genuinely believed their eyesight had suddenly got worse and that the stooges therefore must be right.
Not to look inferior. Not to be a social outcast. These participants had a private belief that the stooges were wrong but kept it to themselves.
To be like everyone else, to appear part of the group.
For us Freudians some later denied they had conformed, when clearly they had! (Asch was himself an admirer of Freud).
Variables Asch found That Increase/Decrease Conformity
Decrease: lack of unanimity
Decrease: induce individual to make commitment to their initial judgment
Decrease: high-self esteem individuals
Decrease: Whether you come from an Individualistic or Collective culture
Decrease: feeling of security in a group
Increase: expert power
Increase: similarity of group to the individual
What Others Say
Eiser (1987) says 'for Asch, the important finding was that there was any conformity at all'
This study become a classic and is to be found in all texts on psychology. However, studies carried out from 1980 onwards have undermined this classic status - or at least proferred alternative explanations for the amount of confomity found.
Perrin and Spencer (1980, 1981) suggested that the Asch effect was a "child of its time". They carried out an exact replication of the original Asch experiment using engineering, mathematics and chemistry students as subjects. The results were clear cut: on only one out of 396 trials did an observer join the erroneous majority. They argue that a cultural change has taken place in the value placed on conformity and obedience and in the position of students. In America in the 1950s students were unobstrusive members of society whereas now they occupy a free questionning role. (see Perrin, S & Spencer, C, 1980. 'The Asch effect - a child of its time'. Bulletin of the BPS, 33, 405-406).
Nicholson, N., Cole, S. & Rocklin, T (1985). 'Conformity in the Asch situation: a comparison between contemporary British and US Students'. British Journal of Social Psychology, 24, 59-63. Nicholson et al were more positive. they found while the number of error responses obtained was significantly less that those reported by Asch, it was also significantly greater than zero (12 out of the UK sample of 38 and 8 of the US sample of 21 conformed at least once). British and American students did not differ in their responses to unanimous peer-group opinion
Lalancette, M-F & Standing, L.G (1990). 'Asch fails again'. Social Behavior and Personality; 18(1) 7-12 Lalancette and Standing modified the social conformity paradigm of Asch (1956) to (1) make the test stimuli more ambiguous and (2) increase the likelihood of obtaining conformity in an experiment with 40 undergraduates. With the same aim, anonymous and individuated conditions were used. As with a previous attempt to replicate Asch (Perrin and Spencer, 1981), no conformity was observed. They conclude that the Asch effect appears to be an unpredictable phenomenon rather than a stable tendency of human behavior.
Neto, F. (1995). 'Conformity and independence revisited'. Social Behavior and Personality, 23 (3), 217-222 This study aimed at investigating whether conformity in the experimental setting suggested by Asch was particularly related to American culture and less likely to be replicable elsewhere - e.g. in Portugal - as has been suggested more recently. Thus, Asch's classic conformity and independence experiment was replicated, using women psychology students in a Portuguese university as minority of one, unanimous majority group, and control participants. The original procedure was re-enacted as similarly as possible using a computer program. Among participants in the experimental condition 59% conformed at least once, 28% yielded three to twelve times. Among participants in the control condition 27% erred at least once, 3.3% made more than three errors. The differences between the experimental and control group was significant. Thus this shows that a degree of conformity to a unanimous peer-group opinion remains observable. Participants reported considerable distress under the group pressure.
Solomon E. Asch 1907 - 1996
Solomon E. Asch was born in Warsaw, Poland, on September 14, 1907. He came to the United States in 1920 and received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1932. He met some amazing people, as his mentor there was the gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer. When he joined Swarthmore College he spent 19 years working with another notable gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Kohler. In his own experiments into conformity Asch was assisted by a young Stanley Milgram, who with his studies into obedience to authority was to later achieve worldwide fame (and a lot of slagging within psychology regards ethics. But you are absolutely right Stan! Take your countrymen's disgraceful antics in Iraq for example. )
What is conformity?
Conformity is a change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.
Asch said that conformity should be measured in terms of our tendency to give the wrong answer on a task where the solution is obvious or unambigious. . This was because of a criticism levelled at an earlier study done by Sherif (1935) called the Autokinetic Effect. In this, Asch and others thought the task was ambiguous, and that this ambiguity influenced the degree of individual conformity shown.
Asch and Conformity
ASCH, S.E. Studies of independence and conformity: a minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs, 1956, 70.
Aim
The aim of these studies was to investigate conformity in a group situation.
Method
Laboratory experiment
Independent variable
There were various manipulations of the IV. Main one involved stooges giving a wrong answer on the size of a line at particular points (critical trials) during the experiment. Other manipulations included the changing the size of the group; whether a stooge (dissenter) disagreed with the majority; and whether the adjudging line task took place in private or public.
Initially in a pilot study Asch tested 36 participants INDIVIDUALLY on 20 presentations of stimuli like the one below. When asked to compare and identify the standard line with the three A, B, C comparison lines only three mistakes were made in 720 trials (0.42 error rate). The purpose of the pilot was to ascertain that the task was both simple and unambiguous. This procedure in social psychology is known as the Asch Paradigm.
designweb.otago.ac.nz/grant/psyc/BARS.GIF
[/img]
Some of his participants were than asked to take part in the main experiment, but this time in a group. They were told that the group was to have a ‘naïve’ participant who would not know that they were stooges.
On certain critical trials, of which there were 12, Asch secretly signalled the stooges to give the same wrong answer. These were interspersed by 6 neutral (right answer) trials, giving 18 trials in all. 50 naïve participants were recruited.
Dependent variable
Occurrence of conformity response by naïve participants when the critical trials occurred.
Procedure
Naïve participant is brought into lab with 7-9 stooges
Seated last, or last but one, at a straight or round table
Asked to make a judgment about line length.
In 12 of 18 trials stooges gave wrong answer. NB DV is whether participant concurs.
Results
Asch found a mean conformity rate of 32% over all trials.
No one conformed on all of the critical trials
Of the 50 naïve participants who took part 13 (20%) never conformed
1 conformed on eleven of 12 critical trials
38 conformed at least once on 12 critical trials
In further studies using his Asch Paradigm he discovered other variables that affect group conformity
Size of group: as group size increases to 3 others, conformity increases. After that, little change. One naïve participant, one stooge 3% conformity. One naïve participant, two stooges 14% conformity. One naïve participant, three stooges 32% conformity (confirmed results of original experiment above).
Unanimity: Presence of one dissenter amongst the stooges decreases conformity immensely
Privacy: The more private the setting the naïve participant is allowed to give their answer (e.g. writing it down/behind a screen) the less conformity there was (12.5%)
Why?
When asked why they had conformed naïve participants reported the following:
To convey a good impression of themselves to the experimenter.
Not to upset the experimenter.
Some genuinely believed their eyesight had suddenly got worse and that the stooges therefore must be right.
Not to look inferior. Not to be a social outcast. These participants had a private belief that the stooges were wrong but kept it to themselves.
To be like everyone else, to appear part of the group.
For us Freudians some later denied they had conformed, when clearly they had! (Asch was himself an admirer of Freud).
Variables Asch found That Increase/Decrease Conformity
Decrease: lack of unanimity
Decrease: induce individual to make commitment to their initial judgment
Decrease: high-self esteem individuals
Decrease: Whether you come from an Individualistic or Collective culture
Decrease: feeling of security in a group
Increase: expert power
Increase: similarity of group to the individual
What Others Say
Eiser (1987) says 'for Asch, the important finding was that there was any conformity at all'
This study become a classic and is to be found in all texts on psychology. However, studies carried out from 1980 onwards have undermined this classic status - or at least proferred alternative explanations for the amount of confomity found.
Perrin and Spencer (1980, 1981) suggested that the Asch effect was a "child of its time". They carried out an exact replication of the original Asch experiment using engineering, mathematics and chemistry students as subjects. The results were clear cut: on only one out of 396 trials did an observer join the erroneous majority. They argue that a cultural change has taken place in the value placed on conformity and obedience and in the position of students. In America in the 1950s students were unobstrusive members of society whereas now they occupy a free questionning role. (see Perrin, S & Spencer, C, 1980. 'The Asch effect - a child of its time'. Bulletin of the BPS, 33, 405-406).
Nicholson, N., Cole, S. & Rocklin, T (1985). 'Conformity in the Asch situation: a comparison between contemporary British and US Students'. British Journal of Social Psychology, 24, 59-63. Nicholson et al were more positive. they found while the number of error responses obtained was significantly less that those reported by Asch, it was also significantly greater than zero (12 out of the UK sample of 38 and 8 of the US sample of 21 conformed at least once). British and American students did not differ in their responses to unanimous peer-group opinion
Lalancette, M-F & Standing, L.G (1990). 'Asch fails again'. Social Behavior and Personality; 18(1) 7-12 Lalancette and Standing modified the social conformity paradigm of Asch (1956) to (1) make the test stimuli more ambiguous and (2) increase the likelihood of obtaining conformity in an experiment with 40 undergraduates. With the same aim, anonymous and individuated conditions were used. As with a previous attempt to replicate Asch (Perrin and Spencer, 1981), no conformity was observed. They conclude that the Asch effect appears to be an unpredictable phenomenon rather than a stable tendency of human behavior.
Neto, F. (1995). 'Conformity and independence revisited'. Social Behavior and Personality, 23 (3), 217-222 This study aimed at investigating whether conformity in the experimental setting suggested by Asch was particularly related to American culture and less likely to be replicable elsewhere - e.g. in Portugal - as has been suggested more recently. Thus, Asch's classic conformity and independence experiment was replicated, using women psychology students in a Portuguese university as minority of one, unanimous majority group, and control participants. The original procedure was re-enacted as similarly as possible using a computer program. Among participants in the experimental condition 59% conformed at least once, 28% yielded three to twelve times. Among participants in the control condition 27% erred at least once, 3.3% made more than three errors. The differences between the experimental and control group was significant. Thus this shows that a degree of conformity to a unanimous peer-group opinion remains observable. Participants reported considerable distress under the group pressure.