factors affecting confomity/asch line study

Question 1

what was the aim of asch’s study?

Answer 1

to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform

Question 2

what was asch’s procedure?

Answer 2

• Asch’s sample consisted of 50 male students from 3 different colleges in the USA who believed they were taking part in a vision test
• Asch used a line judgement task - placed 1 naïve participant in a room with 7-9 confederates who had previously agreed on their answers
• Naïve participant was deceived and led to believe the others were real participants
• Naïve participant was always seated 2nd to last
• Each person had to say which line (A,B,C) was most like the target line in length (always obvious)
• Each participant completed 18 trials and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trials

Question 3

what were the results of asch’s study?

Answer 3

asch measured the number of times each participants conformed to the majority view
on average the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 32% if the critical trials. 74% of the participants conformed on at least 1 critical trial and 26% of the participants never conformed.

Question 4

what was asch’s conclusion?

Answer 4

in group settings more people are likely to conform

Question 5

weaknesses of study

Answer 5

lacks population validity
low ecological validity
didn’t fully adhere to code of ethics

Question 6

strengths of study

Answer 6

carried out in controlled lab setting

Question 7

what 3 variations did asch do of his study?

Answer 7

group size
unanimity
task difficulty

Question 8

what type of variables are they?

Answer 8

situational

Question 9

how did group size affect conformity?

Answer 9

the bigger the majority group (no of confederates), the more people conformed, but only up to a certain point (3 confederates)
1 con - 3%
2 con - 12.8%
3 con - 32%

Question 10

how did unanimity affect conformity?

Answer 10

if one of the confederates dissented and gave the correct answer, then conformity levels dropped from 32% to 5%.
if one of the confederates gave a different incorrect answer, then conformity levels dropped from 32% to 9%.

Question 11

how did task difficulty affect confomity?

Answer 11

when the tasked was made significantly more difficult conformity increased