Discuss what psychological research has told us about why people conform [16]
One example of research that tells us about why people conform is Asch (1951). He aimed to
investigate conformity in an unambiguous way, motivated by insufficient research done previously.
He used an opportunity sample of 123 male, American, psychology undergraduates from his cohort
and organized them into groups of 6. In each group there was five confederates and one naïve
participant. The task involved four lines: one standard line and three comparison lines. The
participants’ task was to say out loud one by one which comparison line was the same length as the
standard line. The confederates were instructed to say the same unanimous wrong answer for 12
out of the 18 trials for each group, so there were 123 trials in total. The dependent variable was the
number of times the naïve participant said the same answer as the confederates. Asch found that
75% participants conformed to the wrong answer at least once and the overall conformity rate was
36.4%. After an interview of the naïve participants after the task, it was found that the naïve
participants conformed due to a need for social approval and not wanting to stand out. Therefore,
this research tells us that people conform due to a need for social approval, i.e. due to normative
social influence. Another piece of research is Lucas et al (2006) who ran a test of Mathematical
ability. He used a sample of students and gave them Maths questions to answer of varying difficulty.
It was found that the conformity rate for harder questions was much higher than the conformity rate
for easier questions. This study tells us that people may conform due to a need to be correct, rather
than for social approval, i.e. informational social influence can be used as an explanation for why
people conform.
A limitation of research is that it cannot tell us why people conform due to samples having low
population validity. Asch (1951) used a sample of American, male undergraduates. This demographic
is limited to a specific culture, country, gender, and age range. This means that this research has low
generalisability and so the findings are unable to be generalised to the entire population. Therefore,
this research cannot explain why people of demographics different from this sample conform. For
example, this research is unable to tell us why people from collectivist cultures conform more.
Although the study has low generalisability, the sample was controlled due to being part of Asch’s
university cohort and so the procedure has high internal validity, meaning that Asch measured what
he intended to measure – so arguably his findings do tell us why people conform.
A limitation of research is that it cannot tell us why people conform due to having opposing
evidence. Perrin and Spencer (1980) is another example of conformity research and they replicated
Asch’s procedure from his line study but used a sample of engineering students in replacement of
the psychology students. It was found that out of 396 trials, the naïve participant conformed only
once. Therefore Asch’s research is unable to tell us why people conform as it is unable to explain this
finding, thus lacks explanatory power for an explanation as to why people conform – it would not be
the result of NSI that 395 out of 396 trials did not conform once.
A strength of research is that it can tell us why people conform due to the procedure having high
internal validity. Asch’s line study was a lab study and therefore had high internal validity due to
having high control of extraneous variables. This means that Asch was measuring was he intended to
measure and so his procedure led to high predictive power, meaning that his findings do tell us
about why people conform. Although his procedure had high internal validity due to high control of
variables, he used artificial tasks. The tasks that the participants were doing were unlike anything
that they would be doing outside of this experiment. Therefore, the procedure has low external
validity due to a lack of mundane realism and so is less able to tell us why people conform as it
cannot explain why people conform in a real-life setting.
One example of research that tells us about why people conform is Asch (1951). He aimed to
investigate conformity in an unambiguous way, motivated by insufficient research done previously.
He used an opportunity sample of 123 male, American, psychology undergraduates from his cohort
and organized them into groups of 6. In each group there was five confederates and one naïve
participant. The task involved four lines: one standard line and three comparison lines. The
participants’ task was to say out loud one by one which comparison line was the same length as the
standard line. The confederates were instructed to say the same unanimous wrong answer for 12
out of the 18 trials for each group, so there were 123 trials in total. The dependent variable was the
number of times the naïve participant said the same answer as the confederates. Asch found that
75% participants conformed to the wrong answer at least once and the overall conformity rate was
36.4%. After an interview of the naïve participants after the task, it was found that the naïve
participants conformed due to a need for social approval and not wanting to stand out. Therefore,
this research tells us that people conform due to a need for social approval, i.e. due to normative
social influence. Another piece of research is Lucas et al (2006) who ran a test of Mathematical
ability. He used a sample of students and gave them Maths questions to answer of varying difficulty.
It was found that the conformity rate for harder questions was much higher than the conformity rate
for easier questions. This study tells us that people may conform due to a need to be correct, rather
than for social approval, i.e. informational social influence can be used as an explanation for why
people conform.
A limitation of research is that it cannot tell us why people conform due to samples having low
population validity. Asch (1951) used a sample of American, male undergraduates. This demographic
is limited to a specific culture, country, gender, and age range. This means that this research has low
generalisability and so the findings are unable to be generalised to the entire population. Therefore,
this research cannot explain why people of demographics different from this sample conform. For
example, this research is unable to tell us why people from collectivist cultures conform more.
Although the study has low generalisability, the sample was controlled due to being part of Asch’s
university cohort and so the procedure has high internal validity, meaning that Asch measured what
he intended to measure – so arguably his findings do tell us why people conform.
A limitation of research is that it cannot tell us why people conform due to having opposing
evidence. Perrin and Spencer (1980) is another example of conformity research and they replicated
Asch’s procedure from his line study but used a sample of engineering students in replacement of
the psychology students. It was found that out of 396 trials, the naïve participant conformed only
once. Therefore Asch’s research is unable to tell us why people conform as it is unable to explain this
finding, thus lacks explanatory power for an explanation as to why people conform – it would not be
the result of NSI that 395 out of 396 trials did not conform once.
A strength of research is that it can tell us why people conform due to the procedure having high
internal validity. Asch’s line study was a lab study and therefore had high internal validity due to
having high control of extraneous variables. This means that Asch was measuring was he intended to
measure and so his procedure led to high predictive power, meaning that his findings do tell us
about why people conform. Although his procedure had high internal validity due to high control of
variables, he used artificial tasks. The tasks that the participants were doing were unlike anything
that they would be doing outside of this experiment. Therefore, the procedure has low external
validity due to a lack of mundane realism and so is less able to tell us why people conform as it
cannot explain why people conform in a real-life setting.
