Asch (1951) Flashcards
Asch’s procedure (1951 not variations)
123 male American undergraduates were recruited to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform. They took part in a line-judgement task which involved participants looking at 4 lines: a standard line and three comparison lines. 1 comparison line was always the same length as the standard line and the other two were clearly different lengths. Participants were unknowingly in groups of 6-8 confederates. Confederates at first gave the right answers but then gave the wrong answers. They all gave the same wrong answer. Each participant took part in 18 trials and on 12 “critical” trials the confederates gave the wrong answer. Participants gave their answers after confederates.
Asch’s findings (1951 not variations)
Participants gave a wrong answer 36.8% of the time
Overall 25% of participants did not conform on any trials
When participants were interviewed after, most said they conformed to avoid rejection (NSI)
Asch effect
What is the Asch effect?
The extent to which participants conformed even when the situation is unambigious
What are the three evaluations for Asch (1951)?
A child of its time
Artificial situation and task
Limited application of findings
A child of its time evaluation
Perrin and Spencer (1980) repeated Asch’s original study with engineering students in the UK and there was only one instance of conforming in 396 trials. It could be that in the 1950’s in the US (post war), it was a particularly conformist time, meaning it made sense to conform to established societal noms, which is a contrast to the UK in the 1980’s. Limitation as the Asch effect is inconsistent across situations and may not be consistant across time, meaning the Asch effect may not be a fundemntal feature of human behaviour
Artificial situation and task evaluation
Participants knew they were in a research study and may have gone along with the demands of the situation (demand characteristics). The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial, meaning there was no real reason not to conform. Although participants were members of a group, Fiske (2014) said “Asch’s groups were not very groupy”. This is a limitation because the findings don’t generalise to everyday situations, especially where the consequences of conformity might be more important, and we don’t interact with other people in a much more direct way.
Limited applicationi of findings evaluation
Only men were tested. Other research suggests women might be more conformist, possibly because they are more concerned about social relationships (and being accepted) than men are (Neto 1995). The men were from the US, an individualust culture (people more concerned about themselves, not their social group). Similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist culturees e.g. China (social group more important than individual) have found conformity rates are higher. This makes sense because such cultures are more oriented to group needs (Bond and Smith 1996). Shows confomrity levels are sometimes even higher than Asch found. Asch’s findings may only apply to US men because he didn’t take gender and cultural differences into account.
