psychology : evaluation of asch's research

Question 1

what is a strength of asch’s research ? (SUPPORT)

Answer 1

support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty

Question 2

who supported asch’s research and what was their findings ?

Answer 2

lucas et al (2006)
- asked their participants to solve ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ maths problems
- participants were given answers from 3 other students and it was found that the participant agreed with the wrong answers more often when the problems were harder

Question 3

how does support asch’s theory ?

Answer 3

• shows asch’s correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity and therefore supports his findings

Question 4

what did the researcher who provided support also find ? (LIMIT)

Answer 4

lucas et al –> founf that conformity is more complex than Asch first suggested

Question 5

how is conformity more complicated that suggested ?

Answer 5

• as participants with high confidence in their maths abilities were found to conform less on hard tasks than those with low confidence

Question 6

how does this show that asch didn’t take something into account ?

Answer 6

• shows that an individual-level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables (e.g. task difficulty)
  –> something asch didn’t take into account

Question 7

what is limitation of asch’s research towards the task ?

Answer 7

task and situation were very artificial

Question 8

what may have made participants have demand characteristics ?

Answer 8

• due to the fact that the set up was unbelievable
  –> parciptants may have been very aware that they were being deceived about the nature of the study and guessed the real aim

Question 9

what could this mean for asch’s result ?

Answer 9

• may actually be due to people guessing what is expected of them and going along with it (demand characteristics )

Question 10

what is a problem with the task and why ?

Answer 10

• task was trivial (Fisk 2014)
  argues that there was no real reason to conform
  AS they were no perceived consequences of getting the answer wrong

Question 11

what is argued about this task to the real world ?

Answer 11

• the task is artificial and lack of repercussion makes very different to real worl group scenario (e.g a jury in a trial )

Question 12

what does this suggest towards Asch’s research ?

Answer 12

• conformity levels in Asch’s research may be exaggerated because of the possibility of demand characteristics and lack of external validity

Question 13

what is a limitation of asch’s research in terms of (people) ?

Answer 13

• his sample of 123 male students from colleges in america

Question 14

what does other research suggest abt the opposite gender ?

Answer 14

• women might be more conformist,possibly because they are more concerned about social relationship than men (Neto , 1995)

Question 15

what is the problem of where it was conducted ?

Answer 15

A’s study was conducted in the US - an individualist culture
- where people are more concerned about themselves rather than their social group .

Question 16

what do studies done in collectivist culture suggest and supported by ?

Answer 16

• where the social group is more important than the individual have found that conformity rates are higher ( Bond and Smith 1996)

Question 17

what does the limitation suggest about asch’s work ?

Answer 17

• shows that conformity levels are sometimes even higher than the Asch found
• Asch’s findings acctually tell us very little about conformity in women in other culturest