1.0 Introduction and Literature Review

Conformity is a psychological phenomenon that involves changing one’s behavior in order to fit in a group of people or a wider community. At the social and societal level, people often compromise their individual characteristics or behaviors through agreeing with or acting like the majority to be perceived as “normal” or “socially desirable”. In fact, many researchers manage to investigate deeply about this psychological topic.

Asch (1950) discovers that individual behaviors can be significantly influenced by the public opinion or judgement even though the majority view might be wrong through a conformity experiment. Asch first concurs with seven confederates and shows them two cards. The confederates are given specific instructions on how to respond. The eighth student is chosen to be the research subject. The right card has three vertical lines with different lengths. The left card only has one vertical line. All of the students are asked to match the length of the line on the left card to same line on the right. The purpose is to analyze and investigate how social pressure may affect the conformity of individual perceptions and behaviors. The rationale behind is that some wrong answers in seven confederates can influence the eighth confederate. Lately, Asch increases the sample size by inviting 123 respondents from three institutions to participate the experiment. He manages to discover that 75% of participants give at least one incorrect answer out of 12 trials. The incorrect responses are often matched with the incorrect responses of the majority view. Throughout the two experiments, Asch (1955) concludes that there are two factors mainly influencing the respondent’s individual behavior and decision-making, namely normative influence and informational influence. Normative influence is referring to the tendency of an individual to conform in order to gain social acceptance. Informational influence, on the other hand, is the desire to gain useful and correct information from the majority of people through conformity.

Mori and Arai (2010) repeat the Solomon Asch experiment with 104 participants in groups of four at a time. In each group, three participants wear identical glasses whereas the last one wears a different set. Participants are asked to say aloud their answer about which of the three lines matches the one on the left. The group of researchers notice that Asch’s experiment has gender bias because only male participants are invited. Mori and Arai (2010) thus recruit both men and women in the experiment. The result of this experiment shows that women are more influenced by a group behavior as compared with their male counterparts. Mori and Arai (2010) suggest that the difference between the two experiments may attribute to other factors such as cultural difference. The group of researcher further identify the research lag in Asch’s experiment. They insist that it is more meaningful to investigate the conformity behaviors among acquainted persons. There is seldom a situation like Asch’s experiment that all of the respondents are total strangers. Besides, the two researchers also believe that the research result might be different among young children because the latter are certainly not confederates. Hanayama and Mori, (2011) conduct the same experiment among 96 Japanese first graders (48 boys and 48 girls). The result shows that the minority of children in the group who observe different stimuli tend to make more errors than the other three children. In addition, there is no major gender difference in the result. It shows that young children, who are not confederates in Asch’s experiment, also tend to conform the majority view.

Moreover, Griggs (2014) states that the conformity theory can also be used to explain the famous Stanford Prison Experiment. Not just limited to perceptions, group value, norms, beliefs and even sadistic tendencies can influence one’s actions and behaviors. Many “jailors” in the experiment are reluctant to act aggressively to the “prisoners” at the beginning. But after observing that most of other people are doing so, in the end, all of the “jailors” act violently toward “prisoners”. On the other hand, “prisoners” gradually develop into an obedient and submissive group behaviors after being violently treated. The Stanford Prison Experiment is actually reaching to a much similar conclusion with the Asch’ conformity experiment.

2.0 Rational for the Proposed Experiment

It should be noticed that in the modern context, it is less recommendable to replicate the Stanford Prison Experiment because it violates human rights even though the researcher manages to obtain consents from the participants. Therefore, the proposed research will still be constructed upon Asch’s experiment or Mori and Arai’s experiment. Mori and Arai are very effective in discovering the research gap in Solomon Asch Experiment. But my research is inspired by their conformity experiment on children. The research gap in the above-mentioned experiment is that the researchers have not identified whether there is a difference in behaviors between children and adults with respect to conformity. The same Asch’s experiment, that is, to invite participants to match one of the three lines on the right to the left, will be repeated among 50 children and 50 adults. The research will maintain a gender ratio will be 1:1.

According to the research of Mori and Arai (2010), cultural difference might be a critical factor in influencing the individual behaviors regarding conformity. Hence, the experiment will be conducted in China. The nature of the research is a cross-sectional study. The collected results will also be compared with the experiment results of Mori and Arai (2010) and Hanayama and Mori, (2011). The anticipated outcome of the proposed research is that both Japanese and Chinese respondents will have conformity behaviors but the degree of conformity may be different. Besides, the degree of conformity between Chinese children and adults will be different. One possible hypothesis is that young children are more influenced by group pressure and behaviors. Last, Chinese adult women may be more influenced by conformity. So far, the Asch’s experiment has not yet been replicated in China’s context. The research results can thus contribute to the psychological literature regarding conformity.

Reference

Asch, S. E. (1955). Opinions and social pressure. Scientific American, 193(5), 31-35.

Mori, K., and Arai, M. (2010). No need to fake it: Reproduction of the Asch experiment without confederates. International Journal of Psychology, 45 (5), 390-397 DOI: 10.1080/00207591003774485

Hanayama, A., & Mori, K. (2011). Conformity of six-year-old children in the Asch experiment without using confederates. Psychology, 2(7), 661.