Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Size of the Majority
- Asch Experiments
- Several variations of
Asch's original experiment
have been completed. In
these the size of the group
has been manipulated,
- i.e. the amount of
confederates is varied
and the effect on levels
on conformity is
measured.
- Conformity is low with one confederate,
3%. With three confederates the
onformity has been found to be 33%.
Thisis similar to Asch's findings of 37%.
- Then there is a ceiling effect i.e.
with further confederates, the
same conformity is seen.
- Multiple replications show that
conformity is at its maximum with a
3-5 person majority (in some
casees too many confederates,
e.g. 15, make the person
suspicious, and this lowers
conformity rates.
- Time
- When Perrin and Spencer
replicated Asch's study in
1981 using male students
just as Asch had, there was
only one instance of
conformity in the 396 trials.
- Asch's studies were conducted in the 1950s
America, at a time known as the
'McCarthyist' era when Senator McCarthy
had openly suggested that people who
appeared 'different' would be seen as
distrustful, radical and maybe even
communist.
- As a result the suggestion is
that people would have
conformed a lot more at ths
time than they would
nowadays, therefore there is
an issue with historical validity.
- Place and Culture
- Differences between individualist and
collectivist cultures can explain differing
levels of conformity across countries.
- Collectivist cultures are more independent and
emphasise group cohesion -they conform to protect
this and thus conform more than individualist cultures
- Smith and Bond, 1993, undertook a
meta-analysis of conformity studies
across many places. They foud
conformity was highest in fiji at 58% and
lowest in Blegium at 14%.
- The Smith and Bond study supports this
suggestion as it found conformity in
individualist countries to be 25%. On
average, compared with 37% on average
in collectivist countries.
- Modern Technology
- The upsurge in emerging
technologies has had a strong effect
on how people can exert the social
influence of conformity.
- . It has meant that minority groups get
heard more easily but psychologists have
assessed whether or not social influence
is as strong as across the medium of the
internet.
- Cinerella and Green, 2005, found that conformity is
generally lower when we can't see the people exerting the
social influence, i.e. if communicating over facebook or
other social inetworking sites.