D Mock - Asch

Question 1

Describe Asch’s sample:

Answer 1

Asch’s sample consisted of:
- 123
- white
- male students
- at 3 different USA colleges

Question 2

What did Asch’s sample believe the test was?
What was it actually?

Answer 2

A vision test
A line judgement task

Question 3

What was the aim of Asch’s study?

Answer 3

To investigate whether individuals would yield to majority influence/ conform to majority view, even when the answer was clearly correct

Question 4

Asch placed 1 naive participant in a room with how many confederates?

Answer 4

6-8

Question 5

In Asch’s study, WHERE was the participant seated in the room with 6-8 confederates?

Answer 5

2nd to last

Question 6

Describe the task the participants were given in Asch’s study.

Answer 6

The group is shown a display of 3 vertical lines of differing lengths, labelled A, B, and C.
They are then shown another display containing 1 vertical line.
The participant was asked to judge which line out of A, B, and C was the same length as the new line.

Question 7

In Asch’s study, how did the group give their answers?

Answer 7

Each person gave their answer in turn, the participant always being near the end.

Question 8

How many trials did each participant complete in Asch’s study?

Answer 8

18 trials

Question 9

What happened on the 12/18 critical trials?

Answer 9

Confederates were instructed to give the same wrong answer.

Question 10

How many trials were control in Asch’s study?

Answer 10

6/18 of the trials were the control

Question 11

In Asch’s study, how many conformed at least once? How many never?

Answer 11

74% conformed at least once
26% never conformed

Question 12

In the control (comparison) group of Asch’s study, where confederates gave correct answers, what were the results?

Answer 12

The error rate amongst participants was 0.7%.

Question 13

In the control group, the error rate amongst participants was under 1% (0.7%), but this rose to what percentage in the critical trials?

Answer 13

The participants gave the wrong answer in 32% of the critical trials (where confederates gave the wrong answer).

Question 14

Asch conducted a number of variations of his original experiment.
What were the 3 variations?

Answer 14

Group size
Unanimity
Task difficulty

Question 15

In Asch’s GROUP SIZE variation, describe the results.

Answer 15

When the majority consisted of only 2 people, conformity dropped to 12.8%.
Increasing the size of the majority did not cause conformity to go beyond 32%. [due to participant suspicion?]

Question 16

In Asch’s UNANIMITY variation, describe the results.

Answer 16

If one confederate in the group gave an answer that was different from the other confederates’ answers, conformity by the real participant dropped to 5%.

Question 17

In Asch’s TASK DIFFICULTY variation, describe the results.

Answer 17

When the task was made more difficult by making the lines more similar in length, conformity increased.

Question 18

Evaluate if Asch’s experiment and variations lacked ecological validity:

Answer 18

Behaviour produced may not be representative of that in the real world (people don’t usually sit around making judgements on tasks).

HOWEVER, the experimental method of laboratory can be defended - a situation where pure group pressure could be studied… everything else that might encourage conformity, such as knowing the people of having an ambiguous task, was stripped away.

Question 19

How did Asch’s experiment and variations lack population validity?

Answer 19

The experiment and variations lacked population validity, because the sample used was unrepresentative.
Only white Americans = ethnocentric. Collectivist cultures show much higher levels than individual ones.
Only males in the original experiment = beta biased. Assumes females are the same = androcentric and gender biased.

Question 20

Do Asch’s results apply to the Western society today?

Answer 20

Asch’s results were relatively high in the 1950s, where conformity was encouraged.
Nicholson et al (1985) replicated Asch with British and American students, finding much lower levels of conformity.

Question 21

Why was Asch’s study criticised for being unethical? Why was it done in the first place?

Answer 21

Participants didn’t provide full informed consent.
However, this was done to get a true measure of conformity levels.

Question 22

Why did Asch’s study lack experimental validity? Or maybe it didn’t?

Answer 22

Some participants said they conformed because they didn’t want to ruin the experiment.
HOWEVER, most participants were taken in by the deception as they showed signs of embarrassment.

Question 23

Why might some people have argued that Asch’s study was a study of anti-conformity?

Answer 23

The % of participants conforming was actually quite low.

Question 24

In what year did Asch’s study take place?

Answer 24

1951