social influence Asch's research evaluation

Question 1

what does it mean when we say that Asch’s experiment is “a product of its time”

Answer 1

when Asch’s research took place (during the 1950’s), it was a more conformist time and therefore it made sense to conform to established social norms

society has changed a great deal since then and people are possibly less conformist today ( proved with Derrin and Spencer’s study)

This is the limitation of Ash’s research because it meas that the Asch effect is not consistent across situations and may not be consistent with time, and so is not a fundamental feature of human behaviour

Question 2

what is the reason behind the outcome of Perrin and Spencer’s study

(a product if its time)

Answer 2

Perrin and Spencer (1980) repeated Asch’s original study with engineering students in the UK

1 student conformed in a total of 396 trails

The engineering students felt more confident about measuring lines than the original sample and therefore less conformist

Question 3

what does it mean when we say that Asch’s experiment was a “artificial situation and task”

Answer 3

Participants knew they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with the demands of the situation (demand characteristics)

The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and therefore was really no reason not to conform

Although the naive participants were memebrs of “group”, it didn’t really resemble groups that we are part of in everyday life. According to Fiske (2014), “Asch’s groups were not very groupy”

Question 4

why would the artificial situation and tasks of Asch’s experiment a limitation

Answer 4

The findings do not generalise to everyday situations. This is especially true where the consequences of conformity might be more important, and we interact with other people in groups in a much more direct way

Question 5

what does it mean when we say Asch research had a limited application to women

Answer 5

Only men were tested by Asch

Other research suggests that women might be more conformist, possibly because they are more concerned about social relationship (and being accepted) than men are (Neto 1995)

certain cultures have different levels of conformity

This shows that conformity levels are sometimes even higher, Asch’s findings may only apply to men in the US as Asch didn’t take gender and cultural differences into account

Question 6

what are some of the ethical issues of Asch’s experiment

Answer 6

naive participants were deceived

It is worth bearing in mind that this ethical cost should be weighed up against the benefits gained from the study