Social Influence: Asch's Study of Conformity Flashcards
What was the procedure?
make 4 points
How many of the 18 trials were critical?
-he told 123 male students they were doing a visual perception task
-it was conducted in a lab setting
-ppts put into groups of 7 and were asked to judge the length of lines where the answer was easy and obvious
-all but 1 ppt were confederates that were told to all give the wrong answer on certain critical trials
12/18
What were the findings of this study?
1
overall conformity rates on critical trials was 33% , compared to an error rate of 0.7% in the control conditions
What did Asch conclude from his study?
that a majority can influence a minority even in situations where the true answer is obvious
RECAP-
what variations of the experiment did Asch investigate and how were conformity rates affected?
Include %s when necessary
group size-1 confederate=3% conformity rate
2=13%
3=32% and any additional confederates made little difference
unanimity-when 1 confederate gave the right answer conformity rates dropped to 5.5%
task difficulty-when comparison lines were much more similar to the stimulus the conformity rates increased
What is a strength of Asch’s study of conformity?
+it was done in a lab
it followed a set procedure and was done in controlled conditions which meant that he could establish cause and effect which increases the validity of his findings
What are 2 weaknesses of Asch’s study?
-conducted in 1951
findings may have been influenced by social attitudes as it was conducted post war so society was much more conformist
means the results may lack temporal validity
-lab experiment
the task was very artificial and simple so there was no real reason not to conform , making it unrepresentative of everyday conformity so its hard to generalise findings
What is a further weaknesses of Asch’s study?
-biased sample
it only included male ppts from America , making it unrepresentative of the whole population so it lacks population validity
