Asch Line Expariment

Question 1

What was the procedure.

Answer 1

• 123 American male undergraduates.
• Each participant placed in a group with 6 - 8 confederates.
  Each person was shown 2 cards, one with a line and one with three lines, with one of the line lengths in second card being same length as the first card’s line.
• Confederates were told to give all the same wrong answers.

Question 2

What did Ash find?

Answer 2

Participants gave the wrong answer 37% of time and 75% of participants gave the wrong answer at least once. This showed that participants who gave the wrong answer were influenced by the group and to not appear stupid.

Question 3

What explanation of social influence does this link to.

Answer 3

This links to ISI as they looked to the group for the correct answer.

Question 4

What are the 3 variations of Ash’s experiment?

Answer 4

• Used more or less confederates. He found in a smaller group people are less likely to conform, however in a bigger group conformity began to decrease as there is less focus on you.
• Confederates gave different wrong answers. Found conformity decreased as there is less decisiveness. With a dissenter who gave right answer conformity to the majority dropped to 5.5%.
• Lines were closer in length. Found conformity increased as participants were more unsure and looked to the group (ISI).

Question 5

What is the negative evaluation? (Temporal validity)

Answer 5

-Lacks temporal validity, not valid in today’s society (experiment done in 1950 when conformity was higher). Researcher repeated Asch’s experiment in 1980 on 396 UK engineering students and only 1 conformed.

• Not representative of real life.
• Hawthorne effect (please the researchers).
• only male participants

Question 6

What are the negative evaluations

Answer 6

• Participants weren’t in a natural situation, the study lacks ecological validity.
• No real life consequences so weather they conformed it doesn’t matter.
• Participants were deceived so ethical issues.