Asch's research evaluation

Question 1

A child of its time

limitation

Answer 1

Asch’s findings are unique because the research took place in a particular period of US history when conformity was more important. During the McCarthyism era people were scared to go up against the majority so more likely to conform. Some years later Perrin and Spencer repeated Asch’s study in the UK and found that in 396 trials only one person conformed. This shows that society is more individualistic and people are less conformist. Limitation as Asch effect is not consistent across situations and may not be consistent across time and so is not a valid explanation of human behaviour.

Question 2

Artificial situation and task (limitation)

Answer 2

ppt knew that they were being researched and may simply have gone along with the demands of the situation (demand characteristics).Also identifying lines was trivial and therefore there was really no reason not to conform as the groups didn’t resemble groups that we are part of in everyday life. Fiske said the groups weren’t groupy. Limitation because it means that the findings don’t generalise to everyday situations because we interact with other people in groups in a much more direct way

Question 3

Limited application of findings (limitation)

Answer 3

There is a form of gender bias in Asch’s research. Only men were studied in this research. Form of beta bias because it ignores the differences in sex. For example Neto found that women are more conformist because they are more concerned about social relationships. Furthermore there’s also Cultural bias as Asch’s ppt were from America which has a individualist culture. This means that results cannot be generalised on a universalistic standards. Bond and smith found that in collectivist cultures there are higher conformity. This shows that conformity levels are sometimes even higher than Asch found. Therefore his findings only apply to American men because he didn’t take into account gender and cultural differences.

Question 4

Findings only apply to certain situations

limitation

Answer 4

Ppt had to answer out loud and were with a group of strangers who they might have wanted to impress which meant higher conformity. On the other hand Williams and Sogon found that conformity was actually higher when majority of groups were friends rather than strangers. Therefore this shows that the results and conclusions of Asch’s study were invalid due to extraneous variables such as participant variables as ppt may have a greater need to affiliate with others.

Question 5

Ethical issues

Answer 5

Naïve participants were deceived because they thought the confederates in the procedure were also genuine ppt. This is a problem as if the ppt are deceived it means they do not understand what is really involved in the study so tehy cannot make an informed consent to take part. As a result it may lead to psychological harm such as humiliation and stress. However the ethical implications of this research is that it gave us a greater understanding of why people choose to conform. It outweighs the ethical issues as the psychological harm experienced by ppt was fairly minor and dealt immediately by debrief but in return we now know how destructive social influence can be combatted