Asch’s Line Experiment Flashcards
Summarise asch’s procedure
• 123 Male US undergraduates took part in a laboratory experiment.
• Told the study was on visual perception.
• 7-9 people sat looking at a display and had to say out loud which one of 3 lines A, B or C was the same as a given stimulus line.
• The correct answer was always obvious (unambiguous).
• All participants, except for 1, were confederates (accomplices) who were working for Asch and gave same incorrect answer on 12/18 critical trials.
What were the findings of asch’s experiment ?
• 37% of the critical trials were conformed on.
• 75% of the participants conformed to at least one wrong answer, leaving 25% of participants who never gave a wrong answer.
• 5% of the participants conformed to all wrong answers.
What did asch conclude from his experiment?
• When interviewed afterwards they said that they conformed publicly to avoid rejection and disapproval but privately they continued to trust their own judgements. As most participants performed publicly, but not privately, it suggests that they were motivated by Normative Social Influence.
• Demonstrates a strong tendency to conform to group pressures in a situation even when the answer is clear.
However, in roughly 63% of these trials the participants stuck to their original judgments also demonstrating a tendency for participants to stick to what they believed to be correct.
How did asch investigate task difficulty and what did he find?
Increased task difficulty by making the stimulus line and comparison line similar in length so correct answer is less obvious
Found participants were more likely to conform to the wrong answer
due to ISI task became more ambiguous so participants looked for guidance
How did asch investigate group size and what did he find?
By varying the number of confederates
Found with one confederate, conformity was low at 3%
Rising to 13% with two confederates
32% with three confederates
After 3 there was no further effect on conformity
Due to NSI task is unambiguous so participants conform to majority
How did asch investigate unanimity and what did he find?
Added the presence of another nonconforming person
When participants were given the support of a confederate who had been instructed to give right answers throughout conformity to wrong answers dropped to 5.5%
When a lone dissenter gave the wrong answer conformity dropped to 9%
Breaking group unanimity decreases conformity
What is a strength of asch’s methodology?
he conducted a controlled laboratory experiment. This meant that Asch could control his variables completely, for example he could manipulate the group size and where the naïve participant sat. Having such control over variables is a strength as it means that the level of conformity is likely to be a result of the manipulation of these variables demonstrating cause and effect, increasing the internal validity.
What is a limitation of asch’s methodology?
the research lacks mundane realism. Asch asked his participants to judge the length of lines, which is a rather trivial task so there was no reason not to conform. This means that the findings do not tell us about conformity in everyday situations therefore we need to be careful when generalising the findings to situations where the consequences are more important,
Why does asch’s research represent a child of its time ?
research took place in a particular period of history in the USA when conformity was high and therefore it made sense to conform to established social norms.
Perrin & Spencer replicated Asch’s study in England in the 1980’s with science and engineering students and found only one student conformed on 396 trials. However, the fact that these were engineering students, they may have felt more confident about their ability to estimate line length than Asch’s original sample. This is a limitation though because it questions the temporal validity of Asch’s research into conformity.
What is a cultural problem with asch’s research ?
he did not take cultural differences into account. The participants in Asch’s study were all from the United States, an individualistic culture where people are more concerned with themselves than the social group (and so are less likely to conform).
This is a limitation because conformity levels are sometimes even higher than Asch found and thus we need to be careful about generalising the results to people outside of the United States.
What are the ethical issues in asch’s experiment?
Asch’s naïve (real) participants were deceived, for example they thought the other participants involved in task of estimating lengths of lines were genuine participants like themselves, when in fact they were confederates. Therefore, they were misled about some aspects of the procedures, as a result, they were unable to give fully informed consent. therefore suggested that the ethical costs should be weighed against the benefits for society. The main benefit was highlighting people’s susceptibility to group conformity.
