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‘Asch’s paradigm’ refers to the multiple conformity studies Solomon Asch conducted in the 1950s.
A paradigm is a fundamental belief, assumption, or truth that most people consider valid. The theory of evolution is an example of a paradigm in biology.
This article will look closely into the Asch study and normative social influence and examine its results and criticisms.
But first, let us cover the basics; what is the definition of normative social influence?
Normative conformity or normative social influence is when people change their behaviour or beliefs to fit into a group.
Asch created his study in response to Sherif’s (1935) autokinetic conformity experiment, in which Sherif asked participants how much a stationary projected light on a screen appeared to move. Asch believed that conformity was theoretically impossible because there was no correct answer to the task in Sherif’s experiment, making it more difficult to be sure whether participants had conformed. With his study, Asch wanted to find out how strong the effects of conformity were even when there was an obvious answer to the task.
What were the experimental conditions of Asch’s visual judgment experiment?
Asch conducted a laboratory experiment with Swarthmore College participants. Participants volunteered and believed that the experiment would be a vision test. Each participant was placed in a group of eight. The other seven participants were confederates (participants who were secretly part of the research team) who were instructed to give incorrect answers in the experiment.
Diagram of materials used in the Asch study, Wikimedia Commons
All participants, including confederates, were given sheets of paper with four lines printed on them. One line was the ‘target line’, and the others were marked A, B, and C. Participants had to name the line that corresponded to the target line. The independent variable was the response of the confederates, and the dependent variable was the actual participant response. Participants were intentionally seated near the end of the seating arrangement so that they could hear the answers from the confederates first. This was to determine if they would match the confederate responses.
Asch also used a control group to ensure the validity of his findings. In this group, there were no confederates, and only 1% of the participants gave an incorrect answer.
Asch found that although the answer to the task was clear, participants were influenced to conform by the confederate responses. Only 26% of participants did not conform, while 74% conformed at least once. Overall, participants matched on 32% of the trials.
The Asch effect is the term used to describe situations in which someone changes their correct answer to an incorrect one in response to the incorrect answers of the majority. This is referred to as compliance.
Asch performed variations of his original experiment with some differences. These differences included variations in group size ranging from one to 15 confederates, reductions in unanimity where a confederate participant was instructed to agree with the true participant, and changes in task difficulty where the agreeing line would be either more or less obvious.
Participants were found to be less likely to conform when fewer confederates were present and more likely when more confederates were present. Asch found that conformity peaked at three confederates (32%). After this point, increasing group size had a negligible effect. This finding proves that normative social influence is stronger in larger groups.
When one confederate was instructed to agree with the participant, the conformity rate dropped significantly to 5%. This could be because the participant felt he had social support in the group, so the effects of normative social influence were not as strong.
However, in another iteration, a fellow participant was instructed to give an answer that was different from both the participant and the rest of the confederates. Conformity still dropped to 9%, indicating that the participant was more likely to question the legitimacy of the answer when the group was no longer unanimous.
Finally, conformity increased when the task was made more difficult, making the answer less obvious to participants. This could be an example of informational social influence, which occurs when someone is unsure of their own knowledge and looks to the information of others for help.
Asch’s study reflected the social norms of the time and may not be applicable to today’s world. In the 1950s, society was much more conformist and consisted of rigid social roles to which people adhered. The McCarthy attitude of the time (the cultural fear of communism) was also very discouraging and classified many forms of non-conformist behaviour as ‘communist’.Perrin & Spencer (1980) criticised Asch’s conformity experiment as being a ‘child of its time and without temporal validity’. They proved this by repeating the experiment with British mathematics, chemistry, and engineering students and found that only 1 of 396 participants conformed.
The task set was artificial and not something one would encounter in daily life. This is a phenomenon where a participant figures out the researcher’s intent and therefore behaves as they think the researcher expects them to.
The study is androcentric in that the participants were all male. This also demonstrates beta bias (theories that ignore differences between males and females), as Asch concluded that the results of his study applied to both genders. Therefore, the results may not generalise to women. The participants were all Americans, so the results cannot be generalised to other countries/cultures.
There are some ethical issues with Asch’s study. His participants could not give informed consent because they believed they were participating in an eye test. Many of them reported stress and anxiety because they were singled out during the experiment.
However, Asch did debrief his participants, which would have provided them with emotional support after the experiment.
Asch’s study did not consider other factors that may have influenced participants’ likelihood of compliance. Williams and Sogon (1984) found that participants were more likely to conform in situations where the majority group consisted of friends.
Asch’s paradigm aimed to understand how groups and normative social influence influenced participants’ conformity.
Participants were divided into groups of eight with seven confederates and asked to assign a ‘target line’ to one of the lines on a sheet of paper.
Asch found that when the confederate’s answers differed from the participant’s, the participant would sometimes conform, changing their answer.
Asch found several factors that influenced the rate of conformity: group size, unanimity, and task difficulty.
Asch’s experiment had some weaknesses. The task was artificial and could have led to feelings of entitlement. It was also androcentric, used only American participants, and had no temporal validity. Participants could not give informed consent, and other variables that could influence participants were not considered.
The Asch conformity experiment (1951) is a study that aimed to show the effects of conformity in a group setting.
Normative conformity or normative social influence is when people change their behaviour or beliefs to fit into a group.
Yes. People were willing to give the wrong answer in the experiment because they felt the need to conform to the confederates.
An example of normative conformity or normative social influence is when you pretend to like a TV show just because your friends often talk about it.
Normative social influence is when people would rather conform to a group than be correct about something they know to be true. Informational social influence occurs when someone is unsure of their own knowledge and looks to the information of others for help.
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