The Analysis of the Conformity - Essay Example

of Affiliation: Solomon Asch - Conformity Experiment According to psychology, conformity is the tendency of an individual to follow an unspoken rule or behavior common to a social group to which he or she belongs. Over a long period, researchers have been studying the extent to which persons obey or fight back the social norms (Wren, 1999). In the 1950s, a psychologist by the name Solomon Asch carried out series of experiments intended to show the influence conformity has in groupings. Aim: To study the degree to which social pressure expressed by a majority group could push an individual to conform. Procedure: Asch carried out lab experiment to research on conformity, whereby fifty male students taken from Swarthmore College in America took part in a ‘vision test’. Employing a line judgment procedure, Asch allowed a naive participant to sit alongside seven confederates in a room. In this case, all the involved confederates had been made to pick particular direction with regard to what their response would be when handling the line task given.  The actual participant did not have a copy on this and was tricked into believing that the other seven participants were also real participants like themselves. Each candidate taking the test was required to loudly state which comparison line from the given A, B and C represented the target line. In all the test rounds the obvious answer was provided. The actual participants were made to sit at the end of the row and came as the last person to respond to the question. The study involved a total of 18 tests and the confederates were made to deliberately state wrong answer on 12 tests (referred the critical trials).  In all these trials Asch concern was to find out if the actual participant would show conformity to the popular view. Additionally Asch’s set a control experiment that involved no confederates, only a "real participant" (McLeod, n.d). Results: Asch determined the frequency with which each participant showed conformity to the popular view. On average, a close figure of one third or 32 percent of the participants involved in this condition clearly showed their conformity with the obviously incorrect bulk on the critical trials. From the 12 critical trials conducted, close to 75% participants showed conformity at least once while the other 25% showed no sign of conforming. This is very different from the result got in the control trials, where actual participant did not face pressure to conform to confederates. In these cases, less than 1% o gave incorrect answer(McLeod, n.d). Conclusion What was it that made the real participants to readily conform?  When the real participants were interviewed at the end of the experiment, the majority openly indicated that they did not agree with their conforming answers at all. However, they chose to agree with the answer given by the majority for fear of being laughed at or thought "strange".  A small number said that they actually did suppose that the groups response were correct. Apparently, individuals conform for two major reasons: the push to fit in with the majority also called normative influence(McLeod, n.d). Secondly, they consider the majority to be better informed than they are, thus called informational influence. Evaluation: This study depicts a number of limitation, the most important being the use of biased sample. Asch experiment involved participants who were all male students representing a single age group. Considering this facts, it is obvious that the study lacked population validity and thus the results cannot be employed when considering a general group that includes older people and females. Another limitation regards the experiments’ application of an artificial task to determine conformity - judging line lengths. In this regard, the study is viewed as having low ecological significance and the outcome is not comprehensive enough to cover other real life conditions of conformity. Criticisms of the Asch Conformity Experiments (strength and weakness) Strength: the fact that Aschs’ experiment gave such a high degree of conformity result contrary to his expectation proved its strength. The result simply suggests that the whole experiment had been well-designed and thus functional in such a way that” instead of confirming the experimenters prejudice, it provided information which challenged it.” Weakness 1: It is possible that the larger extend of conformance identified by Asch experiment was in part a result of the existing social condition (in the time of McCarthyism). Succeeding attempts to go over the experiment have repeatedly shown lower rates of conformance, a factor that casts uncertainty as to whether the results can be used in a general manner. A good example is the Perrin and Spencer (1980) replication of the original Asch experiment. In their study Perrin and Spencer used participants drawn from British mathematics, engineering, and chemistry students. “The outcome was a clear cut: on only one out of 396 trials did a participant conform to the incorrect majority.  This shows the Asch experiment has poor reliability.” Weakness 2: The trial must have been time-consuming, as only one "actual" participant could be allowed to undertake the test per iteration. The 1951Asch study has been referred as “a child of its time” on the ground that conformity formed the Americans 1950’s social norm. Individualism era, which simply meant ‘doing your own thing’, only came into being in the 1960s ( Housden, 2002). The ethical issue in conformity test The ethical concern which has been identified in studies of conformity includes deception. This revolves on the fact that participants were tricked as to the test they are undertaking or not fully educated on the situation. Considering Asch experiment, it is true that some participants were deceived to hold a wrong believe as to the intention of the test and the task of other participants. Here, the participants did not have a clue that some participants involved in the experiment were simply confederates. In addition, Sherif deceived their participants regarding the aim of the study (McLeod, n.d). On the other hand, it is important to note that without deception the goal of the study could not be met and internal validity could have been compromised. Such is the case that the participants would have known the psychologists intentions of testing their conformity, and thus fake their responses. Based on this ground, deception will always be an important element while studying conformity. The second ethical issue depicted in the study of conformity relates to protection from harm. The researchers should prepare the Participants fully to avoid cases where participants feel worse over the responses they gave, when the experiment is over(Harwood, Miller, & Vasta 2008). References Harwood, R, Miller, S A, & Vasta, R 2008, Child psychology, development in a changing society (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley & Sons. Housden, M.2002, Resistance and conformity in the Third Reich ,Taylor & Francis e-Library ed, London, Routledge. McLeod, S,n.d, Asch Experiment, - Simply Psychology, Retrieved February 18, 2014, from http://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html Wren, K 1999, Social Influences, London, Routledge. Read More