Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch's (1952b, 1956) line judgment task
Bond and Smith gathered a hundred and thirty-three conformity studies from seventeen countries, all using the Asch line-judgment task, and asked two questions the original experiments could not: whether conformity has changed over time and whether it varies by culture. Both answers are yes. Within the United States, conformity declined steadily from the 1950s onwards, which supports the long-standing suggestion that the striking levels Asch found were partly a product of their moment. Across countries, conformity was higher in more collectivist societies and lower in more individualist ones, using three separate survey measures of that dimension. The authors' conclusion is that conformity research has treated a culturally and historically variable behaviour as a fixed feature of groups. They also note that Asch himself was as interested in what allowed people to resist as in what made them yield, and located both in a society's values. This vault cites it whenever the Asch result is presented as a universal finding.
Bond and Smith gathered a hundred and thirty-three conformity studies from seventeen countries, all using the Asch line-judgment task, and asked two questions the original experiments could not: whether conformity has changed over time and whether it varies by culture. Both answers are yes. Within the United States, conformity declined steadily from the 1950s onwards, which supports the long-standing suggestion that the striking levels Asch found were partly a product of their moment. Across countries, conformity was higher in more collectivist societies and lower in more individualist ones, using three separate survey measures of that dimension. The authors' conclusion is that conformity research has treated a culturally and historically variable behaviour as a fixed feature of groups. They also note that Asch himself was as interested in what allowed people to resist as in what made them yield, and located both in a society's values. This vault cites it whenever the Asch result is presented as a universal finding.
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What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Bond, R. & Smith, P. B. (1996). "Culture and Conformity: A Meta-Analysis of Studies Using Asch's (1952b, 1956) Line Judgment Task." Psychological Bulletin. 133 studies across 17 countries; American conformity declining since the 1950s; collectivist countries higher.
Where we use it
- The Invisible Weight of Belonging, Why We Belong
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.119.1.111
DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.119.1.111