Asch (conformity) Flashcards
What was Asch’s aim?
Aim: To investigate whether people would conform to the majority in a situation where the majority gave a clearly incorrect answer (unambiguous situation).
What was Asch’s method?
Method: Male students were asked to take part in a study on visual discrimination’. Each participant was put into a group of 6-8 people. However, the others in the group were stooges or confederates. There was only one ‘naïve’ (real) participant in each group.
The group sat in a semi-circle and their task was to decide which of three comparison lines was the same length as the reference line. They had to answer aloud, with the real participant answering second to last. On some trials the stooges would unanimously give an incorrect answer to see if the participant would conform to the majority view.
What were Asch’s results?
Results: Participants conformed (giving an obviously incorrect answer) on average 37% of the time.
25% of participants gave the correct answer every time (they didn’t conform at all).
75% of participants gave at least one incorrect answer (they conformed at least once).
5% of participants gave the incorrect answer every time (they always conformed).
What was Asch’s conclusion?
Conclusion: People conform to the majority even in situations where the majority give an answer which is clearly wrong! Asch concluded that groups exert pressure on an individual in some way.
Asch AO3 (reliability)
P- Asch’s study is high in reliability
E- The study uses standardised instructions, so you can repeat it
T- Therefore you can also check findings for consistency
Asch AO3 (ethically questionable)
P- Asch’s study is ethically questionable
E- Asch’s study breached numerous ethical guidelines including deception. He deliberately deceived participants by telling them they were taking part in a vision test and not an experiment on conformity
T- Asch’s study required the use of deception in order to obtain reliable results. If the participants were aware of the true aim, they would’ve displayed demand characteristics and acted differently. Asch also fully debriefed participants after and gave them the right to withdraw.
Asch AO3 (child of time)
P- The study can be seen as a ‘child of its time’
E- The high conformity may be due to the socio-political context of 1950s America. (People with left wing views were disliked by the ultra conservative government)
T- Therefore, the results may not generalise to other time periods and situations questioning the temporal validity of this study
Asch AO3 (beta bias)
P- This study is an example of beta bias- ignoring sex differences and assuming both sexes behave in the same way
E- For example, all participants were men. This is a problem as other research findings suggest that women may be more conformist, possibly because they are concerned about social relationships and being accepted
T- This is a weakness as it means that conclusions drawn about conformity may only apply to men. Therefore, results are not generalisable to the whole population.
