Solomon Asch's experiment on group conformity demonstrated
that people will conform with a group
, even if they feel or know that the group is wrong.
What is main message of Solomon Asch's series of experiments in which participants were asked to judge the lengths of lines people will modify their answers?
What is the moral or the take-home message of Solomon Asch's (1951, 1956, 1957) series of experiments in which participants were asked to judge the lengths of lines?
People will go to great lengths: Not to look like fools in front of others.
What did the Solomon Asch experiment demonstrate quizlet?
Solomon Asch (1951) conducted an experiment
to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform
. Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, whereby 50 male students from Swarthmore College in the USA participated in a ‘vision test'.
What is the central idea of Asch experiment?
The Asch experiment showed that
people's individual perceptions can be influenced by the perceptions of a larger group
. Study subjects in the Asch experiment were tricked into believing that their peers were also participants, instead of confederates.
What was the purpose of Solomon Asch experiment?
Asch was interested in looking at how pressure from a group could lead people to conform, even when they knew that the rest of the group was wrong. The purpose of Asch's experiments?
To demonstrate the power of conformity in groups.
How did Solomon Asch show the power of conformity?
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/stooges.
What was Asch's hypothesis?
Asch hypothesized that
when confederates (fake participants) uniformly gave a particular response in a group setting, the lone true participant would feel pressure to conform to the group consensus
.
What are the main factors that influence conformity?
Several factors are associated with increased conformity, including
larger group size, unanimity, high group cohesion
, and perceived higher status of the group. Other factors associated with conformity are culture, gender, age, and importance of stimuli.
What are two types of conformity?
Normative conformity
involves changing one's behavior in order to fit in with the group. Informational conformity happens when a person lacks the knowledge and looks to the group for information and direction. Compliance involves changing one's behavior while still internally disagreeing with the group.
What is the main difference between Asch and Sherif's conformity studies?
Another difference between the two experiments was that
Asch had control over his participants and Sherif had none
. The effect of this was that the results could show conformity clearly as it was evidently definable conformity was occurring whereas Sherif's results were in ranges that followed a norm.
What is the major conclusion of Asch's experiment on group pressure and individual judgment?
So what was the conclusion? Asch found that
thirty-seven out of fifty test subjects responded with an “obviously erroneous” answer at least once
. When faced by a unanimous wrong answer from the rest of the group, the subject conformed to a mean of four of the staged answers.
What does it mean to conform to society?
Conformity
is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms, politics or being like-minded. … People often choose to conform to society rather than to pursue personal desires – because it is often easier to follow the path others have made already, rather than forging a new one.
What are the 3 types of conformity?
There are three types of conformity:
compliance, identification and internalisation
.
What caused most people to conform in Asch's study?
The experiment concluded that people conform for two main reasons:
they want to fit in with the group (normative influence)
and because they believe the group is more informed than they are (informational influence).
What are 7 conditions that strengthen conformity?
Seven conditions that strengthen conformity: 1)
one feels insecure
, 2) group has at least three people, 3) group is unanimous, 4) _____________, 5) one has no prior commitment to a response, 6) group is watching, 7) less individualistic society.
What did Solomon Asch believe?
While Asch's work illustrated how peer pressure influences social behavior (often in negative ways), Asch still believed that
people tended to behave decently towards each other
. The power of situations and group pressure, however, could often lead to less than ideal behavior and decision-making.
