The experiment youll be taken today is about the Perception of blanck of lines.

As you can see here I have no. of cards and

every cards they have a several lines. And your test are very simple one. If you look on the line of the left and determine w/c
of the three lines in the right is equal to the left. Alright we proceed to this order

Imagine yourself in the following situation: You sign up for a psychology experiment, and on a specified date you and seven
others whom you think are also participants arrive and are seated at a table in a small room.
You don't know it at the time, but the others are actually associates of the experimenter, and their behavior has been carefully
scripted. You're the only real participant.
The experimenter arrives and tells you that the study in which you are about to participate concerns people's visual
judgments. She places two cards before you. The card on the left contains one vertical line. The card on the right displays
three lines of varying length.
The experimenter asks all of you, one at a time, to choose which of the three lines on the right card matches the length of the
line on the left card. The task is repeated several times with different cards.
On some occasions the other "participants" unanimously choose the wrong line. It is clear to you that they are wrong, but
they have all given the same answer.
What would you do? Would you go along with the majority opinion, or would you "stick to your guns" and trust your own
eyes?
If you were involved in this experiment how do you think you would behave? Would you conform to the majoritys
viewpoint?
Asch believed that the main problem with Sherif's (1935) conformityexperiment was that there was no correct answer to the
ambiguous autokinetic experiment. How could we be sure that a person conformed when there was no correct answer?
Asch (1951) devised what is now regarded as a classic experiment in social psychology, whereby there was an obvious
answer to a line judgment task. If the participant gave an incorrect answer it would be clear that this was due to group
pressure.
Aim: Solomon Asch (1951) conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group
could affect a person to conform.

Procedure: Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, whereby 50 male students from Swarthmore College in the USA
participated in a vision test. Using a line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates.
The confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the line task. The real
participant did not know this and was led to believe that the other seven participants were also real participants like
themselves.

Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was
always obvious. The real participant sat at the end of the row and gave his or her answer last.
There were 18 trials in total and the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 trails (called the critical trials). Asch was
interested to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view. Asch's experiment also had a control condition
where there were no confederates, only a "real participant".
Results: Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about one third
(32%) of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on
the critical trials.
Over the 12 critical trials about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participant never conformed. In the
control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer.
Conclusion: Why did the participants conform so readily? When they were interviewed after the experiment, most of them
said that they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed
or thought "peculiar". A few of them said that they really did believe the group's answers were correct.

Apparently, people conform for two main reasons: because they want to fit in with the group (normative influence) and
because they believe the group is better informed than they are (informational influence).
Evaluation: One limitation of the study is that is used a biased sample. All the participants were male students who all
belonged to the same age group. This means that the study lacks population validity and that the results cannot be generalized
to females or older groups of people.
Another problem is that the experiment used an artificial task to measure conformity - judging line lengths. How often are we
faced with making a judgment like the one Asch used, where the answer is plain to see? This means that study has low
ecological validity and the results cannot be generalized to other real life situations of conformity. Asch replied that he
wanted to investigate a situation where the participants could be in no doubt what the correct answer was. In so doing he
could explore the true limits of social influence.
Some critics thought the high levels of conformity found by Asch were a reflection of American, 1950's culture and tell us
more about the historical and cultural climate of the USA in the 1950s than then they do about the phenomena of conformity.
In the 1950s America was very conservative, involved in an anti-communist witch-hunt ( which became known as
Mccarthyism) against anyone who was thought to hold sympathetic left-wing views. Conformity to American values was
expected. Support for this comes from studies in the 1970s and 1980s that show lower conformity rates (e.g. Perrin &
Spencer ,1980).
Perrin and Spencer (1980) 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. They found that 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 unobtrusive members of
society whereas now they occupy a free questioning role.
However one problem in comparing this study with Asch is that very different types of participants are used. Perrin &
Spencer used science and engineering students who might be expected to be more independent by training when it came to
making perceptual judgments.
Finally, there are ethical issues: participants were not protected from psychological stress which may occur if they disagreed
with the majority. Evidence that participants in Asch-type situations are highly emotional was obtained by Back et al. (1963)
who found that participants in the Asch situation had greatly increased levels of autonomic arousal. This finding also suggests

that they were in a conflict situation, finding it hard to decide whether to report what they saw or to conform to the opinion of
others.
Asch also deceived the student volunteers claiming they were taking part in a 'vision' test; the real purpose was to see how the
'naive' participant would react to the behavior of the confederates. However, deception was necessary to produce valid
results.
Factors Affecting Conformity
In further trials, Asch (1952, 1956) changed the procedure (i.e. independent variables) in order to investigate
which situational factors influenced the level of conformity (dependent variable). His results and conclusions are given
below:
Group Size
Asch (1956) found that group size influenced whether subjects conformed. The bigger the majority group (no of
confederates) the more people conformed, but only up to a certain point. With one other person (i.e. confederate) in the group
conformity was 3%, with two others it increased to 13% and with three or more it was 32% (or 1/3).
Optimum conformity effects (32%) were found with a majority of 3. Increasing the size of the majority beyond 3 did not
increase the levels of conformity found. Brown and Byrne (1997) suggest that people might suspect collusion if the majority
rises beyond 3 or 4.
According to Hogg & Vaughan (1995) the most robust finding is that conformity reaches its full extent with 3-5 person
majority, with additional members having little effect.
Lack of Group Unanimity / Presence of an Ally
As conformity drops off with 5 members or more, it may be that its the unanimity of the group (the confederates all agree
with each other) which is more important than the size of the group.
In another variation of the original experiment Asch broke up the unanimity (total agreement) of the group by introduced a
dissenting confederate. Asch (1956) found that even the presence of just one confederate that goes against the majority choice
can reduce conformity as much as 80%. For example, in the original experiment 32% of participants conformed on the
critical trials, whereas when one confederate gave the correct answer on all the critical trials this conformity dropped to 5%.
This was supported in a study by Allen & Levine (1968). In their version of the experiment they introduced a dissenting
(disagreeing) confederate wearing thick-rimmed glasses thus suggesting he was slightly visually impaired. Even with this
seemingly incompetent dissenter conformity dropped from 97% to 64%. Clearly the presence of an ally decreases conformity.

The absence of group unanimity lowers overall conformity as participant feel less need for social approval of the group (re:
normative conformity).
Difficulty of Task
When the (comparison) lines (e.g. A, B, C) were made more similar in length it was harder to judge the correct answer and
conformity increased. When we are uncertain, it seems we look to others for confirmation. The more difficult the task the
greater the conformity.
Answer in Private
When participants were allowed to answer in private (so the rest of the group does not know their response) conformity
decreases. This is because there is less groups pressure and normative influence is not as powerful, as there is no fear of
rejection from the group.
Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group.
This change is in response to real (involving the physical presence of others) or imagined (involving the pressure of
social norms / expectations) group pressure.
Conformity can also be simply defined as yielding to group pressures (Crutchfield, 1955). Group pressure may take
different forms, for example bullying, persuasion, teasing, criticism, etc. Conformity is also known as majority
influence (or group pressure).
The term conformity is often used to indicate an agreement to the majority position, brought about either by a desire to
fit in or be liked (normative) or because of a desire to be correct (informational), or simply to conform to a social role
(identification).
Types of Conformity
Kelman (1958) distinguished between three different types of conformity: Compliance, internalization and identification.
Compliance (or group acceptance)
This occurs 'when an individual accepts influence because he hopes to achieve a favourable reaction from another person or
group. He adopts the induced behaviour because....he expects to gain specific rewards or approval and avoid specific
punishment or disapproval by conformity' (Kelman, 1958, p. 53).
In other words, conforming to the majority (publicly), in spite of not really agreeing with them (privately). This is seen
in Aschs line experiment.

Compliance stops when there are no group pressures to conform, and is therefore a temporary behavior change.
Internalisation (genuine acceptance of group norms)
This occurs 'when an individual accepts influence because the content of the induced behaviour - the ideas and actions of
which it is composed - is intrinsically rewarding. He adopts the induced behaviour because it is congruent [consistent] with
his value system' (Kelman, 1958, p. 53).
Internalisation always involves public and private conformity. A person publicly changes their behavior to fit in with the
group, while also agreeing with them privately.
This is the deepest level of conformity were the beliefs of the group become part of the individuals own belief system. This
means the change in behaviour is permanent. This is seen in Sherifs autokinetic experiment.
This is most likely to occur when the majority have greater knowledge, and members of the minority have little knowledge
to challenge the majority position.
Identification (or group membership)
This occurs 'when an individual accepts influence because he wants to establish or maintain a satisfying self-defining
relationship to another person or group' (Kelman, 1958, p. 53).
Individuals conform to the expectations of a social role, e.g. nurses, police officers. It is similar to compliance as there does
not have to be a change in private opinion. A good example is Zimbardo's Prison Study.
Man (1969) identified an additional type of conformity:
Ingratiational
This is when a person conforms to impress or gain favor/acceptance from other people.
It is similar to normative influence, but is motivated by the need for social rewards rather than the threat of rejection, i.e.,
group pressure does not enter the decision to conform.

Why People Conform

Deutsch and Gerrard (1955) identified two reasons why people conform.

Normative Conformity

Yielding to group pressure because a person wants to fit in with the group. E.g. Asch Line Study.

Conforming because the person is scared of being rejected by the group.

This type of conformity usually involves compliance where a person publicly accepts the views of a group but
privately rejects them.

Informational Conformity

This usually occurs when a person lacks knowledge and looks to the group for guidance.

Or when a person is in an ambiguous (i.e. unclear) situation and socially compares their behavior with the group.
E.g. Sherif's Study.

This type of conformity usually involves internalization where a person accepts the views of the groups and
adopts them as an individual.