social influence- conformity

Question 1

evaluation- asch
strength: high internal validity (2)

Answer 1

-participants did the experiment without confederates before, removing the confounding variable of lack of knowledge
-valid+reliable cause and effect relationships can be established

Question 2

evaluation- asch
strength: ISI

Answer 2

-researcher found participants conformed to incorrect answers when maths problems were hard
-situation became more ambiguous, so participants looked at majority group
-people are more likely to conform

Question 3

evaluation- asch
criticism: lacks ecological validity

Answer 3

-artificial task- experiment +conculsions were based on people’s perceptions of lines, so findings can’t be generalised to real life

Question 4

evaluation- asch
criticism: lacks temporal validity (perrin and spencer)

Answer 4

-social context of 1950s affected results- anti-communist period where people were scared to be different

Question 5

evaluation- asch
criticism: ethical issues

Answer 5

-deception- participants were told the study was about perception not conformity, so they couldn’t give informed consent
-psychological harm- participants could’ve been embarrassed after realising the aims of the study

Question 6

evaluation- zimbardo
strength: real life applications

Answer 6

-improved how US prisons ran- prisons where cells were under constant surveillance were scrapped as it increased the effects of institutionalisation and over exaggerated the differences in social roles

Question 7

evaluation- zimbardo
strength: zimbardo’s control over variables (4)

Answer 7

-selection of emotionally stable participants- rules out individual differences as an explanation for the findings
-can assume behaviour was due to social pressure
-increased internal validity- methods used were standardised
-confidence in drawing conclusions increases ad establishing cause+effect relationships about the influence of social roles on behaviour

Question 8

evaluation- zimbardo
criticism: lacked realism (2)

Answer 8

-participants knew they were in a study- lead to demand characteristics, which is a confounding variable
-study becomes invalid- no longer measuring conformity to social roles

Question 9

evaluation- zimbardo
criticism: exaggerated the power of the situation to influence behaviour

Answer 9

-1/3 of guards were brutal, the rest were fair or supported the prisoners
-most guards resisted situational pressures to conform
-zimbardo was swayed by the file-drawer effect- he only released findings that fit his hypthesis
-minimised the differences in dispositional factors