Solomon Asch (1955)

Question 1

What was the aim of Asch’s study?

Answer 1

To investigate the degree to which individuals would conform to a majority who gave obviously wrong answers.

Question 2

What was Asch’s procedure?

Answer 2

123 American male student volunteers took part in what they were told a study about visual perception.
Individual participants were placed in groups with between seven and nine others, sat either in a line or around a table, who in reality were pseudo-participants (confederates -people who are really working with the researcher).
The task was to say which comparison line A,B or C was the same as a stimulus line on 18 different trials. 12 of these were ‘critical’ trials, where the pseudo-participants gave identical wrong answers, and the naïve (real) participants always answered last or second to last.
There was also a control group of 36 participants that were tested individually on 20 trials, to test how accurate individual judgements were.

Question 3

What were the findings of Asch’s study?

Answer 3

The control group had an error rate of 0.04% which shows how obvious the correct answers were.
On the 23 critical trials, there was a 32% conformity rate to wrong answers.
75% of participants conformed to at least one wrong answer.
5% of participants conformed on all the wrong answers.
Post experiment interviews with participants found they conformed to the wrong answer because they wished to avoid ridicule (distortion of action), they believed they must in some way have been wrong (distortion of perception) or they doubted their accuracy in judgement (distortion of judgement).

Question 4

Why is this study important?

Answer 4

Normative Social Influence - why do people conform to an answer when they know it is wrong.

Question 5

What are the strengths of this study?

Answer 5

• Carried out in a lab setting meaning the study was carefully controlled and there was good control over extraneous variables.
• Standardised procedure - same group number per trial, same number of trials, same questions asked.
• Revealed the degree to which a person’s own opinions are influenced by those of a group.
• Well controlled task so can be replicated.

Question 6

What are the limitations of Asch’s study?

Answer 6

• Low ecological validity
• Ethical issues of deception.
• Isn’t generalised to women, people of different cultures and ages as the sample is made up entirely American, male undergraduate students - results are only generalised to that specific group (lacks population validity).
• Sample size is too small to be generalised to everyone globally.