No need to fake it: Reproduction of the Asch experiment without confederates

Abstract

In the present experiment, we replicated Asch's seminal study on social conformity without using confederates. We adapted a presentation trick in order to present two different stimuli secretly to groups of participants to create minorities and majorities without utilizing confederates. One hundred and four Japanese undergraduates (40 men and 64 women) carried out Asch-equivalent tasks in same-sex groups of four. In each group, we adapted the fMORI Technique to present the tasks such that one person (minority participant) observed different stimuli than the other three people (majority participants). The same nine stimulus sets that Asch had used were carefully reproduced as PowerPoint slides and projected onto a half-transparent screen. As for the critical tasks, the top part of the standard lines appeared in either green or magenta so that two groups of participants would see them differently when they wore two types of polarizing sunglasses that filtered either green or magenta to make the lines appear longer or shorter. A post-experimental questionnaire confirmed that no participant among either the minority or majority viewers noticed the presentation trick. The results showed that, in line with Asch's basic findings, the minority women participants conformed to the majority. However, our study produced two different results: While minority women conformed, minority men did not. Contrary to Asch's findings, the frequency of conformity of minority participants was almost the same regardless of whether the majority answered unanimously or not.

Language in dialogue: when confederates might be hazardous to your data

“…For example, rather than instructing a confederate addressee to act inattentively (Jacobs & Garnham, 2007;Pasupathi, Stallworth, & Murdoch, 1998), naive addressees can be secretly preoccupied with a second task Kuhlen & Brennan, 2010). Even conformity to obviously incorrect perceptual judgments, as famously manipulated through the use of confederates in Asch's (1955) experiment, may be triggered by means of manipulating the perceptions of naive interacting partners by having them surreptitiously view different stimuli than those viewed by the subjects being tested (Mori & Arai, 2010). All of these approaches represent promising alternatives to using confederates while maintaining sufficient experimental control.…”

Social conformity and autism spectrum disorder: A child-friendly take on a classic study

“…More recent studies that have examined conformity have not used a panel of (Mori and Arai, 2010;Hayanama and Mori, 2011;Haun and Tomasello, 2011). Mori and Arai (2010) argue that confederates often act unnaturally and that presenting the panel and participant with different images leads to more natural responses.…”

“…Mori and Arai (2010) argue that confederates often act unnaturally and that presenting the panel and participant with different images leads to more natural responses. Perhaps because of the difficulties in recruiting children for studies such as these, due to lack of ability or understanding, relatively few studies had been conducted looking at conformity processes in children until recently (e.g., Hayanama and Mori, 2011;Haun and Tomasello, 2011).…”

Group versus Individual Reward in the Asch Experiment without Confederates

“…Twenty groups of four university male students (N = 80; 19 -24 years old; mean age, 20.7 and SD, 1.32) participated in the Asch conformity experiments without using confederates, as developed by Mori and Arai (2010). Participants were randomly assigned: one of each foursome to the minority condition and the remaining three to the majority condition.…”

“…Mori and Arai [7] devised a new experimental procedure utilizing a presentation trick [8] with polarizing filters so that two different stimuli were presented on the same screen without viewers' being aware of the duality. Using this procedure, Mori and Arai presented lines with different lengths to one minority viewer and a group of three others.…”