Assessment 1

Blog Task 1B - Writing 3

The Asch Conformity Experiment

“In psychological terms, conformity refers to an individual's tendency to follow the unspoken rules or behaviors of the social group to which he or she belongs.”

The experiment was conducted in 1951 by Solomon Asch.

One of the pairs of cards used in the experiment. The card on the left has the reference line and the one on the right shows the three comparison lines.

“Each participant was placed in a room with seven "confederates" (actors). Confederates knew the true aim of the experiment, but were introduced as participants to the "real" participant. Participants were shown a card with a line on it, followed by a card with three lines on it (lines labeled A, B and C, respectively). Participants were then asked to say aloud, which line (i.e., A, B or C) matched the line on the first card in length. Each line question was called a "trial". Prior to the experiment, all confederates were given specific instructions on how they should respond to each trial. Specifically, they were told to unanimously give the correct response or unanimously give the incorrect response. The group sat in a manner so that the real participant was always the last to respond (i.e., the real participant sat towards the end of a table). 

For the first two trials, the participant would feel at ease in the experiment, as he and the confederates gave the obvious, correct answer. On the third trial, the confederates would all give the same wrong answer, placing the participant in a dilemma. There were 18 trials in total and the confederates answered incorrectly for 12 of them. These 12 were known as the "critical trials". The aim was to see whether the real participant would change his answer and respond in the same way as the confederates, despite it being the wrong answer.”

The Asch Experiment describes the Social Cognitive View of Motivation where an individual’s ideas are subjective to the group’s decision.

Reference:

http://psychology.about.com/od/classicpsychologystudies/p/conformity.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments