Asch Flashcards
what subsection is asch apart of?
reaching a verdict
what other studies are apart of this research?
hastie
asch
nemeth
what did asch look into ?
majority influence
what is the aim of aschs research?
to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could influence a person to conform when task is unambiguous
what was the method ?
a lab experiment
who were the participants?
123 male students
what did the p/s have to take part in?
a vision test
what took place during the experiment?
put a naïve p/s in a room with 7 confederates who had agreed in advance what their response would be
each person had to state which comparison line most matched the target line (the answer was always obvious
where did the participant sit?
at the end , and gave answer last
how many trails were there ? and which of them did the confederate give the wrong answer?
18
12/18 times confederates gave the wrong answers
asch was interested to see if the real participant would conform to majority view
what was the main finding?
about 1/3 (32%) of p/s went along with the situation and conformed to majority
what is a second finding?
that majorities bigger than three making little difference to conforming effect, this is because there is enough to create a norm while two would be inefficient
what did p/s say in the post interview ?
most said they did not believe their conforming answers but a few said they did not believe the group answers were correct
what are the two main reasons people conform?
normative- want to fit in (don’t want to feel stupid)
informative- they believe the group is better informed than themselves
Known as the asch paradigm
what is some evaluation of asch?
particiants ? students ? representative ?
up to date ? individualism ?
ethical issues ? deception ?
