asch Flashcards
asch
research support for NSI
123 male American participants were tested
each in group with other apparent participants
each participant saw two white large cards on each trial
line x on left hand card=standard line
lines A,B,C=comparison lines
clearly same length as X but two are substantially different (clearly wrong)
each trial, participants had to say out loud which of the comparison lines were the same as the standard line X
12 out of the 18 trials were critical
on average, genuine participants agreed with confederates, gave incorrect answers 36.8% of the time (1/3 of the time)
25% never gave wrong answer/never conformed
big individual differences in amount people are affected by minority difference
most conformed publicly but not privately
ash interviewed them after experiment and participants said they knew their answers were incorrect but they went along with the group in order to fit in, or because they thought they maybe ridiculed
ash extended baseline study
extended his baseline study to investigate variables that might lead to increase or decrease in conformity
Group size
Unanimity
Task difficulty
variables that ash used
Group size
unanimity
task difficulty
study tip: GUT
group size
wanted to see if size of group more important then agreement of group
found that with 3 confederates, conformity to wrong answers rose by 31.8%
however, addition of further confederates made little difference
suggests small majority is not sufficient for influence to be exerted
other extreme, no need for a majority of more than three
unanimity
wanted to see if presnce of another, non conforming person would affect naive particpants conformity
task difficulty
asch made the line judging task more difficult by making the stimulus line and the comparison lines more similar in length
he found that conformity increased under these conditions
suggests that informational social influence plays a greater role when the task becomes harder. this is because the situation is more ambiguous so we are more liekly to look to other people for guidance and to assume that they are right and we are wrong
weakness-ash sample is biased
used a biased sample of 123 male students from colleagues in America
therefore we cannot generalise the results to other approaches
weakness-ach study lacks historical validity
asch research took place at particular time in US history when conformity was arguably highe and has been criticised as being a child of its time
weakness-ethical issues breached
ach research is ethically questionable. He broke several guidelines including deception and protection from harm. Asch delibertarly deceived his participants saying that they were taking part in a vision test and not an experiment for conformtuy
weakness-Aschs study is low in ecological validity
it could be argued that asch experiment has low levels of ecological validity. ach test of conformity, a line judgment test is an artificial task which does not reflect conformity in everyday life which means it lacks mudane realism
