Asch Flashcards
What was the aim of Asch’s study?
To investigate majority influence to test if ppts would conform to others’ answers in an obvious experiment
What was Asch’s sample?
123 American Male undergraduate volunteers who were told they were taking part in a visual perception test
What was Asch’s procedure?
Ppts tested with group of 6-8 confederates, shown 2 cards, one had 1 line on and the other had 3, one of which matched the line on the other card
Ppts asked to answer out loud which of the 3 lines matched
What was the role of the confederates?
Instructed to give the incorrect answer on 12 out of 18 occasions (critical trials)
Instructed to get first few right to gain trust of the real ppt
How did Asch test individual judgement?
Control group of 36 ppts who were tested individually
What did Asch find?
36.8% conformity rate in 12 critical trials
5% confirmed for all 12, 25% didn’t conform once
Conformity rates went from 32% to around 5.5% when there was more than one dissenter
Conformity rates went up as the task got more difficult
What did Asch’s ppts say afterwards?
Conformed because of fear of rejection
Still kept own beliefs internally
Child of its time?
Perrin and Spencer (1980) carried out same study in UK on engineering students and found 1 conforming response in 396 trials
1950s USA was very conformist because of McCarthyism (anti-communist)
Lacks temporal validity
extraneous variables?
Highly controlled, all EVs are controlled, easy to establish cause and effect, high internal validity
However, uses artificial, trivial tasks, so lacks external validity
Generalisable?
50 American Male students so difficult to generalise
Neto (1995) suggested women might be more conformist as they’re more concerned about social relationships
Smith and Bond (1998) suggest that conformity rates are higher in collectivist cultures, such as China, as they are more concerned with group needs
Ethical issues?
Ppts were deceived, goes against BPS and APA’s guidelines, wouldn’t be able to be carried out today
However, ethical cost must be weighed against benefits: no-one was going to be caused harm and results were significant in understanding conformity
