aschs experiment Flashcards
summary
Solomon Asch experimented with investigating the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.
He believed the main problem with Sherif’s (1935) conformity experiment was that there was no correct answer to the ambiguous autokinetic experiment. How could we be sure that a person conformed when there was no correct answer?
Asch (1951) devised what is now regarded as a classic experiment in social psychology, whereby there was an obvious answer to a line judgment task.
If the participant gave an incorrect answer, it would be clear that this was due to group pressure.
procedure
Using a line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates/stooges. The confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the line task.
The real participant did not know this and was led to believe that the other seven confederates/stooges were also real participants like themselves.
Participants: 123 male undergraduates were tested, with one real participant and the rest confederates.
Setting: Participants were seated around a table.
Task: Participants were shown a card with a line on it, and then another card with three lines labeled a, b, and c. They were asked to say which line matched the reference line in length.
Trials: There were 18 trials in total, with the confederates giving the wrong answer on 12 of them. These were known as the “critical trials”.
Order: The real participant always answered second to last.
Results: 75% of participants conformed at least once, and on average, 37% conformed on each critical tria
finding
In the experiments, participants were more likely to give an incorrect answer if it was first given by other participants who were actually working for the experimenter. Asch found that 75% of participants conformed to the group’s incorrect answer at least once.
ethical issues
he study raised ethical issues, including deception and lack of protection from harm. Participants experienced distress related to the fear of rejection or anxiety.
