Social Influence - Conformity: Asch's research Flashcards
Who took part in the study?
123 Male american undergraduates
What was the procedure for Asch’s research?
Procedure:
- Participants were tested in groups of 6 to 8
- Each group was presented with a standard
line and three comparison lines
-Participants had to say aloud which comparison line matched the standard line in length
-In each group there was only one genuine (naive) participant the remaining were confederates
-The genuine participant was seated second to last and did not know the other participants were fake participants
-The fake confederate participants all gave the same incorrect answer
Confederates were told to give the incorrect answer on 12 out of 18 trails
How many critical trials were there?
There were 12 critical trials
What were the findings of Asch’s research?
Findings
- The naive participants agreed with the confederates’ incorrect answers 32% of the time:
- 75% of the sample conformed to the majority on at least one trial
-25% of participants never gave a wrong answer, which shows there were individual differences
What is the % of times the naive participants give the wrong answer?
32%
What is the % of people who conformed at least once?
75%
What is the % of people who conformed did not conform?
25%
Define the asch effect?
The extent which participants conform even when the situation is unambiguous
What was the result of group size variation?
A small majority isn’t sufficient for influence. Also any more than 3 confederates is needed for influence to be exerted
Did conformity levels increase or decrease with unanimity ? Also what is the % ?
The presence of a dissenter decreased conformity by 25%
What does task difficulty variation results suggest?
The more difficult the task, the more people conform
Research support- Lucas et al 2006
for Asch
P: One strength of Asch’s research is it has been supported by other studies
E: Lucas et al (2006) asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems and found participants conformed to the wrong answer more often when the problems were hard
E: This supports Asch’s claim that task difficulty is one variable that effects conformity
L: therefore …
Limitation of Asch Research - Limited application due to gender-bias it is not generalisable
One limitation of Asch’s research is that it is not generalisable
E: Asch used a biased sample of 123 male American undergraduate students, so we are unable to conclude if female students would conform similarly to the male students
E: As a result Asch study lacks population validity
L: Therefore, these results are limited to their application
Limitation of Asch’s research - Child of its time
P: Another limitation of Asch research is that it is a child of its time
E: Perrin and Spencer (1980) who repeated Asch’s study with engineering students in the UK.
They found only one person conformed in a total of 396 trials.
E: This means that the Asch effect may not be consistent across situations and across time
L: Therefore it’s not a fundamental feature of human behaviour
Limitation of Asch research: Limited application due to ecological validity
P: Another limitation of Asch’s research is that it has low ecological validity
E: Asch used a line judgement task ( an artificial task), which doesn’t reflect conformity in everyday life
E) Consequently Asch’s research cannot be generalised to real-life situations, such as why people may start smoking.
L: Therefore these results have limited application.
