Question

Describe the Asch conformity experiments. Identify and discuss two variations of Asch’s conformity experiments. How do these experiments illustrate the nature of conformity? When are individuals likely to conform? Under what conditions do people deviate? Explain and provide examples. ​

Answer 1

Ash conformity experiments known as ash paradigm was done by solomon asch if individuals yielded to or defied a majority and effects on the influences of beliefs and opinions.solomon Asch conformity experiment is now regarded as classic experiment in social psychology.If the partcipant gave an asnwer it would be due to group pressure.In 1951 he conducted an experiment to investigate how the extent of social pressure could affect aperson to confomr.He used a lab experiment where there are 50 students from a college participated in a vision test .He puts a naive participant in a room with seven confederates ,where they agree in advance what their responses would be ,the real participant did not know this and made to believe other participants were also real.Each person in the room had to loudly state the comparison of three lines given in a picture is similar to the target line given in an other picture.out of 18 trials in total 12 were wrong trials.His objective was to check if the real participant would conform to the majority.The conclusion led him to think why participants conform readily,when interviewed after the experiment majority said they did not believe their conforming answers but went along with the group for fear of being ridiculed.He came to a conclusion that people conform for two reasons,because of normative influence where they want to fit into a group and information influence where they believe the group is better informed than they are.He believed that the factors that affect conformity are ,conformity tends to increase when there are more people ,conformity increases when the task becomes difficult,in face of uncertainty they turn to others for information and how to respond,confirmity increases when members of the group have high social status,and confirmity decreases when people are privately able to respond or have support from one individual in the group.