asch's research

• what was the aim of asch's research?

  to test conformity levels of individual participant in a group of confederates
• naive participant is...

  participant who is led to believe that others within an experiement are also participants
• confederate is...

  a person who is in on the experiment, but who the naive participant thinks is a real participant
• who was asch's sample?

  123 white, male, American, college students, who believed that they were taking part in a vision study
• what were participants instructed to do?

  compare the stimulus line to the three comparison lines given
• how many critical trials were there?

  12
• what happened on the critical trials?

  confederates gave identical wrong answers
• where was the naive participant sat in each trial?

  last/penultimate
• on critical trials, what was the percentage of conformity?

  36.8%
• what percent of participants conformed at least once?

  75%
• what percent of participants didn't conform at all?

  25%
• why did participants conform?

  due to NSI - distortion of action - didn't want to stand out so conformed to the group publicly

  due to ISI - distortion of judgement - doubted their accuracy when compared to the group
• what happened to conformity when the task was made more difficult?

  conformity increased - it was made harder to judge the correct answer, people turn to each other when they are unsure
• what happened to conformity when the group size increased?

  conformity increased - when there was one other confederate, conformity = 3%, with 3 or more, conformity = 32%
• what happened to conformity when there was another non-conformer confederate within the group?

  conformity decreased - non-conformer enable naive participants to behave more independently

  conformity decreased from 36.8% to 25%
• limitations of asch's study include...

  society was more conformist, participants displayed demand characteristics, only males and Americans were studied - data cannot be generalised
• when did asch's original research take place?

  1951
• perrin and spencer...

  carried out asch's study with engineering students 30 years after asch's original study

  only 1/396 trials conformed - due to confidence judging line lengths or because society used to be more conformist
• perrin and spencer's research was a...

  limitation of asch's study
• why may participants have displayed demand characteristics?

  if they had guessed what the study was, they may have just gone along with what asch wanted of them

  the setting was very artificial, group unalike that of everyday life
• what type of culture does America have?

  individualistic
• individualistic culture...

  where people prioritise standing out as an individual over fitting in as a group
• collectivist culture...

  where people prioritise loyalty, belonging and fitting into a group over standing out as an individual
• which country did smith and bond (1993) find to have the highest levels of conformity?

  fiji - 58%
• which country did smith and bond (1993) find to have the lowest levels of conformity?

  belgium - 14%
• what were the three variations of aschs study?

  group size, task difficulty, unanimity
• what's an ethical issue of asch's study?

  that the participants were deceived, didn't know that the confederates weren't real participants
• what could asch have argued about deception?

  it was necessary to find out how many participants would conform