mong groups of American students and suggested this was because of a changed climate of opinion in America in 1970s towards independence and criticism and away from conformity. However, in a later study in 1979 by Larsen et al they found results very similar to those of Asch.Perrin and Spencer found lower rates of conformity in 1981 (one out of 396 trials) for a group of British students but were chemistry, maths and engineering students and so were better adapted to resist conformity pressure due to their better knowledge and experience. Significantly, in the same study young offenders in probation showed similar results to Aschs study.One of the main criticisms of Aschs studies was that participants were conforming because they were reluctant or embarrassed to expose their private views in a face to face situation. Thus, the level of conformity should decrease if they are allowed to write their answers down where there is no face to face contact between group members. Crutchfield (1954) used a non- face to face procedure. He criticised Aschs experiments for being time consuming and uneconomical since only one participant could be tested at a single time. He changed his experiment so that several real participants (usually 5) could be tested at the same time. He tested over 600 participants. Each participant sat in an open cubicle, which had a panel with an array of lights, and switches and neighbouring panels could not be seen. Questions pictures and other stimuli were projected on the wall and participants were told that the lights on the display panel indicated the answers of other participants. Every participant saw an identical display and received the same information so that each believed they were the last to respond. The answers were wrong on half the trials. Crutchfield presented a verity of different tasks so conformity to the wrong answers differing according to the type of task involved. On the Asch type perce...
