Asch (1951) Flashcards
Asch designed an experiment to see whether
people would conform to a majorities incorrect answer in an unambiguous task where the correct answer is obvious
Asch study name
conformity to an unambiguous task
Asch date
1951
Method: what was the study?
a laboratory study with an independent groups design
Method: how large were the groups?
8 participants
Method: what did the participants judge?
line lengths
Method: how many real participants were in each group?
one, the rest were confederates
Method: the real participant always
either last or second to last so they could always hear the confederates answers
Method: each participant did
18 trials
Method: how many of the trials did all the confederates give the wrong answer? (the critical trials)
12
Results: in the control trials, participants gave the wrong answer
0.7% of the time
Results: in the critical trials
participants conformed to the majority 37% of the time
Results: what percentage conformed at least once?
75%
Results: afterwards, some participants said
they didn’t actually believe their answers but they didn’t want to be different
Conclusion: the control condition showed that
the task was easy to get right
Conclusion: what percentage were wrong on the critical trials?
37%
Evaluation: the study was a
laboratory experiment
Evaluation: because the study was a laboratory experiment, this means there was good control over the
variables
Evaluation: the strict variable control means there will be little effect by
extraneous variables
Evaluation: strict control also means it would be easy to
replicate the study
Evaluation: because the study wasn’t a natural situation, the study lacks
ecological validity
Evaluation: Ethics
the participants were deceived and might have been embarrassed if they thought they were wrong
