SOC 01 - Asch experiment

Question 1

What are the different types of social influence?

Answer 1

• Obedience
• Conformity
• Independent behaviour
• Minority influence

Question 2

Who conducted the line experiment? And when?

Answer 2

Solomon Asch (1951)

Question 3

What is conformity?

Answer 3

A change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.

Question 4

What is social influence?

Answer 4

• The process by which individuals and groups change eachother’s attitudes and behaviours
• This includes conformity, obedience and minority influence

Question 5

What was the baseline procedure of Asch’s line experient?

Answer 5

• 123 American men were tested, each one in a group of six confederated (those who did not actually play a role in the experiment)
• Each participant saw two large white cards on each trial
• The card on the left-hand side had one line which was the standard line and the card on the right had three lines which were the comparison lines
• One of the comparison lines is always clearly the same length as the standard line
• On each trial participants had to say out loud which of the comparison lines matched the standard line
• The confederates would get the answer wrong on 12/18 trials

Question 6

What was the physical arrangement of the participants in the study?

Answer 6

• The genuine (naïve) participant, was always seated last or second to last in the group
• The confederates all gave the same (often incorrect) answer each time

Question 7

What were the baseline findings of Asch’s experiment?

Answer 7

• On average, the genuine participants agreed with the confederates’ incrorrect answers 36.8% of the time
• However, there were individual differences
• 25% of the participants never conformed
• 75% of the participants conformed at least once

Question 8

What variables did Asch investigate?

Answer 8

• Group size
• Unanimity
• Task difficulty

Question 9

What occured when Asch investigated group size?

Answer 9

• In his investigation of group size, Asch varied the number of confederate from 1 to 15
• Asch noticed that there was a curvilinear relationship between the rate of conformity and the number of confederates
• However, after 7 confederates (the peak) the conformity rate dropped, possibly due to demand characteristics
• When there were 3 confederates conformity rates increased massivly to 32%

Question 10

What occured when Asch investigated unanimity?

Answer 10

• Asch investigated whether a non-conforming confederate (a disruption in unanimity) would affect the rate of conformity
• When there was at least one non-conforming confederate the conformity rate dropped drastically to 9%

Question 11

What occured when Asch investigated task difficuly?

Answer 11

• Asch wanted to see what would occur if he made it harder to distinguish between the standard line and the comparison lines
• As task difficulty increased the level of conformity increased possibly due to ISI

Question 12

What occured when participants were asked to write down their answers? And why?

Answer 12

The conformity rate dropped to 12.5% as there was no normative group pressure.