Baron, et al. (1996) improved Asch's (1951) experiment and suggested that the influence of conformity of an individual's task performance was based on the importance and the difficulty of the task. Participants took part in a study of eyewitness accuracy and were exposed to various eyewitness identification slides with two confederates who gave incorrect judgments on the trials in advance to the judgment of the real participant in different conditions (Baron et al., 1996). An opposite impact of conformity was found on the task performance according to the easy or difficult tasks, participants lower their conformity and improved task performance on the low-difficulty task, and heightened their conformity and had a poorer performance on the high-difficulty task in the high-importance condition (Baron et al., 1996). In the high-importance condition, participants desired the probability of winning the reward and were motivated to give the correct answer. Participants in the low-difficulty task could easily get the correct answer themselves so there was a small effect of the confederates, however, participants in the high-difficulty condition were more likely to be not confident on their judgment and they intended to seek for other's people view in order to give a correct answer (Baron et al., 1996). As a result, conformity being the cause of the poorer performance of a person within a group should be based on the situation, particularly the importance and the difficulty of the
Baron, et al. (1996) improved Asch's (1951) experiment and suggested that the influence of conformity of an individual's task performance was based on the importance and the difficulty of the task. Participants took part in a study of eyewitness accuracy and were exposed to various eyewitness identification slides with two confederates who gave incorrect judgments on the trials in advance to the judgment of the real participant in different conditions (Baron et al., 1996). An opposite impact of conformity was found on the task performance according to the easy or difficult tasks, participants lower their conformity and improved task performance on the low-difficulty task, and heightened their conformity and had a poorer performance on the high-difficulty task in the high-importance condition (Baron et al., 1996). In the high-importance condition, participants desired the probability of winning the reward and were motivated to give the correct answer. Participants in the low-difficulty task could easily get the correct answer themselves so there was a small effect of the confederates, however, participants in the high-difficulty condition were more likely to be not confident on their judgment and they intended to seek for other's people view in order to give a correct answer (Baron et al., 1996). As a result, conformity being the cause of the poorer performance of a person within a group should be based on the situation, particularly the importance and the difficulty of the