Asch's Study AO3

Question 1

What are the strengths of Asch’s study?

Answer 1

• Mori and Arai used filters on glasses to show that affect what one participant saw so the experiment is reliable as whether or not a confederate is convincing doesn’t have the same
• supported by Lucs et al who used maths levels to increase the difficulty of the questions affect conformity

Question 2

What are the weaknesses of Asch’s study?

Answer 2

• it has a low temporal validity as it was done during the 1950s where people were expected to conform otherwise they would become a victim of McCathyism
• it doesn’t apply to everyone as in collectivist cultures conformity is shown to be higher (37%) than in individualist cultures (25%) according to Smith et al

Question 3

What is a counter argument to Lucas et al’s support for Asch’s study?

Answer 3

in the experiment those who were confident in maths conformed less which shows that it’s affected by individual differences and therefore may not be a reliable piece of evidence to support Asch’s study

Question 4

What is the counter for the idea that Asch’s study has a low temporal valididy

Answer 4

• Perrin and Spencer did an experiment using youths on their probabtion and officers as their confederates
• in this experiment they found the same results as in 1950s