Asch Flashcards
Methodology (+)
–A strength of Asch’s methodology is that he conducted a controlled
laboratory experiment. This meant that Asch could control his variables completely, for example he could manipulate the group size and where the naïve participant
sat. Having such control over variables is a strength as it means that the level of conformity is likely to be a result of the manipulation of these variables demonstrating cause and effect, increasing the internal validity.
Methodology (-)
However, the research lacks mundane realism. Asch asked his participants to judge the
length of lines, which is a rather trivial task so there was no reason not to conform. This means that the findings do not tell us about conformity in everyday situations therefore we need to be careful when generalising the findings to situations where the consequences are more important, for example when sitting on a jury
Asch’s research may represent ‘a child of its time’
is possible that these findings are
unique because the research took place in a particular period of history in the USA when conformity was high and therefore it made sense to conform to established social norms.
People might be less likely to conform in subsequent decades. Perrin & Spencer replicated
Asch’s study in England in the 1980’s with science and engineering students and found only
one student conformed on 396 trials. However, the fact that these were engineering students, they may have felt more confident about their ability to estimate line length than Asch’s original sample. This is a limitation though because it questions the temporal validity
of Asch’s research into conformity.
Culture bias
– One problem with Asch’s research is that he did not take cultural differences into account. The participants in Asch’s study were all from the United States, an individualistic culture where people are more concerned with
themselves than the social group (and so are less likely to conform). Similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures, such as China where the social group is more important than the individual, have found conformity rates are higher. This makes sense because such cultures are more oriented to group needs (Smith and
Bond, 1996). This is a limitation because conformity levels are sometimes even higher than
Asch found and thus we need to be careful about generalising the results to people outside of
the United States.
