Aschs Study Flashcards
Procedure
Tested conformity by showing participants two large white cards at a time one had a standard line and the other three comparison lines. Participants were American undergraduates.
Each naive participant was tested individually with a group of between 6 and 8 confederates.
On first few trials confeds gave the correct answer but then began to make errors (all confeds instructed to give the same wrong answer).
Findings
Naive participant gave a wrong answer 36.8% of the time
Overall 25% of participants did not conform on any trials and 75% conformed at least once
They conformed to avoid rejection
Variations
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Group size
Found with 3 confeds conformity to wrong answer rose to 31.8% but addition of further confeds made little difference
If group was too big naive became suspicious
Unanimity
Wanted to know if presence of another non conforming made a difference
Presence of dissenting confed conformity reduced by 1/4
Presence of dissenter enabled the naive person to behave independently
Task difficulty
Made task more difficult by making stimulus line and comparison line closer in length
Found conformity increased under these conditions
Suggests informational social influence plays a greater role when task become more difficult
Evaluation
Time bound- Perrin and spencer (1980) repeated aschs study with engineering students in U.K. only 1/396 conformed. Engineering students may feel more confident about measuring line, but it may be that the 1950s were an especially conformist time in America and therefore it was a social norm.
Artificial situation and task- participants knew they were in a study and may have gone along with the demand of the situation (demand characteristics). Therefore do not generalise to everyday situations.
Ethical issues- naive participants were deceived as they thought confeds were also genuine participants like themselves.
