Asch research into variables affecting conformity

Question 1

limitation:lack of ecological validity

Answer 1

E:Aschs study took part in laboratory conditions and involved participants making judgements on lengths of lens in front of a group of strangers
E:both Asch’s task and research setting were highly artificial.this means that the behaviour of the participants may tell us very little about the way people naturally behave outside the lab when confronted with these kinds of situations. additionally aschs confederates were not trained actors so participants could have recognised the confederates and guessed the aim of the experiment and altered their behaviour to please asch . thus meaning his research could have been undermines by demand characteristics .
L:therefore the artificial nature of ascots research may have undermined its ecological validity.

Question 2

strength:it provided an effective way of investigating if and why people will conform in unambiguous situations.

Answer 2

E:prior to asch ,social psychologists studied conformity using ambiguous tasks like jeness jelly bean experiment.
E:Asch’s study was an advance on these previous studies because the line judgement test was unambiguous. This is proven by the less than 1% error rate in the initial controlled condition suggesting the task was easy.therefore The conformity Asch observed was the result of the influence of others, and not due to the challenge of the task. this was further supported by follow up interviews where many participants admitted they gave the wrong answer in order to be accepted by the group.This suggests that those participants were influenced by NSI as they conformed in order to be accepted by the group, and not because they believed the group to be correct. later asch manipulated specific variables such as group size and task difficulty, and investigated what effect these have on conformity. lastly, asch study was clearly operationalised meaning it was easy to replicate his procedure and obtain vast amounts of data on conformity in unambiguous situations.
L:aschs line experiment provided a clever method for investigating the conformity in unambiguous scenarios which was a new concept in psychology.