Outline and evaluate research into conformity: (12 marks)

Asch carried out a key study in the field of conformity in 1951, looking at whether people will conform to the group and give an incorrect answer to a simple question. Asch used 50 male college students overall, and in each group there were 7 students - one oblivious participant, and 6 confederates of the experimenter. Asch showed each group a series of cards in pairs - one card had a vertical line on it, and the second card had 3 lines of differing lengths on it, one of which matched the line on the first card. One by one, the students were asked aloud which line matched the one on the first card - A, B or C. The six confederates of the experimenter gave the same wrong answer, and Asch observed whether the oblivious participant conformed to the group and gave the incorrect answer. Asch found that around 75% of participants conformed to the incorrect answer at least once, showing that even in situations where the correct answer is obvious, there is still huge pressure to conform, especially when the group is unanimous. A weakness of this study is that the sample was small, unrepresentative and biased - Asch used only male students, all the same age and all from the same college, meaning that the results can’t be generalized to females or older or younger people. Another issue is that the task was artificial, meaning that the study had low ecological validity and the findings can’t be generalized to other real-life situations. On the other hand, the Asch study was incredibly influential and inspired a lot of other similar studies into the area of conformity, which supported Asch’s findings.
An example of this is Crutchfield (1955), who carried out the same study but in private booths, finding that private response caused 30% conformity, which supports Asch’s research. A second example, however, is Perrin and Spencer in 1980, who copied Asch’s study on British students and found only 1 in around 390 students conformed to the group. This contradicts Asch’s findings and the experimenters concluded that changes in society since the 1950’s when Asch carried out his experiment caused the drop in conformity. Therefore, we could criticize that Asch’s experiment had historical and cultural bias, and is only relevant to 1950’s America.
In conclusion, Asch inspired the main body of research into conformity, and his findings were relevant and conclusive at the time, but since his study changes in society have caused his findings to become out-dated and new studies have had to take its place.