Outline what Asch did in his study of conformity and the findings of this study (6 marks)

In Asch's study of conformity, he recruited 23 male undergraduates to take part in a lab experiment, which he told them was investigating visual discrimination. However, the true purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a group's behaviour on an individual. In each experiment there were several confederates and one real participant who all partook in a task in which they had to match the length of a "standard" line to 3 other lines of differing lengths and then give their answer out-loud in a group setting with the true participant always answering second to last. The lines were made purposefully unambiguous and easy to match. However, the confederates were instructed to give the wrong answer on 12 out of the 18 trials. Asch was interested in whether the real participant conformed and gave the "wrong" answer or stuck to what they believed to be correct. Furthermore, Asch did follow up studies in which he altered different variables, such as the group size and unanimity of the majority to observe whether these altered the average conformity rate. Asch found that on the 12 critical trials the average conformity rate was 33% compared to a control condition where mistakes were made only 1% of the time. Additionally, Asch found individual differences in conformity rate with one quarter of the participants not conforming on any of the critical trials suggesting that compliance is not an automatic response but rather a variable process with many different factors influencing it. Furthermore, when Asch interviewed and debriefed the participants afterwards he found that the majority of participants that had conformed continued to privately trust their own perceptions and judgements, showing clear evidence of compliance.