Asch Flashcards
What did Asch want to experiment
The extent to which social pressure from a majority could affect a person to conform
Who was in Aschs sample
50 male students
What did participants believe they were taking part in
A vision test
What did Asch use for his experiment
A line judgement task,
How did he place participants
One naive participant in a room with seven confederates, who had agreed their answers in advance
Where did the real participants sit
Second to last
What did the participants have to do
Say out loud which line was most like the target line in length
How many trials did each participant complete
18
What were critical trials
The 12 trials in which the confederates gave incorrect answers
What did Asch try to see
If a participant would conform to a majority view even if it was clearly incorrect
On average, how often did the real participants conform to the majority view
32% of the critical trials
How many conformed on at least 1 critical trial
74%
How many participants never conformed
26%
What did Asch find when using one control group with no confederates
That less than 1% of participants gave an incorrect answer
Why did most participants say they conformed
To fit in or fear of ridicule
What is an issue of aschs sample
It couldn’t be generalised to other populations like female students
What does aschs research lack
Population validity
What does the use of a line task mean for aschs research
That it lacks ecological validity as it is an artificial task
What did Asch break
Ethical guidelines
How did Asch deceive his participants
Saying that it was a vision test
How does the research lack temporal validity
It was conducted in 1950s when people were more conservative
