asch

• • Asch conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform in an unambiguous situation
  • He recruited 123 US uni students to carry out his lab experiment. Using the line judgement task, participants were asked to say out loud which of the three lines in an image matched the target line.
  • 12/ 18 trails were critical trials when confederates were instructed to say out the same incorrect answer
  • On average, 36.8% participants in each trial conformed to the clearly incorrect majority. 75% conformed on at least one trial. 
• Asch conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform in an unambiguous situation

  123 US uni students

  Using the line judgement task, participants were asked to say out loud which of the three lines are the same length as the target line.

  12 critical trials out of 18 when confederates were instructed to say the same incorrect answer to see how that could affect the participants answers.

  36.8% participants in each trial conformed to the clearly incorrect majority. 75% conformed on at least one trial. 
• One limitation of Asch’s study is that it lacks ecological validity. For example, Asch conducted the study in an unrealistic environment: naive participants were grouped with strangers (confederates) in a lab and were asked to do an unrealistic task. This means naive participants’ behaviours in the experiment might not reflect how they would naturally behave in real life, because people may sometimes experience conformity when with people who they knew. This therefore lowers the ecological validity of the study, making the study providing limited explanation for conformity. 
• One limitation of Asch’s study is that it lacks generalisability. For example, Asch’s study recruited only male participants for his experiment. This means that the results from the study may only be able to explain how male individuals might respond to majority views, while females may react differently due to potential differences in emotional and social needs. This therefore makes the study not generalisable to the wider population in this world, providing limited explanation for conformity.
• One limitation of Asch’s study is that it deceived participants. For example, naive participants were not aware that the study is about conformity but though it was a study about cognition.  The means Asch did not provide participants with informed consent at the beginning of the study, when participants should be told the true aim of the study. This therefore makes the study less ethical as it breached the ethical guideline of conducting psychological research. 
• situational variables - group size

  asch (1956) found that with one real participants and one confederate conformity was low, rising to 13% with two confederates and 32% with three confederates. adding extra confederates had no further effect
• situational variables - unanimity

  conformity rates decline when conformity is not unanimous

  asch (1956) found if there was one confederate who went against the other confederates, conformity dropped from 32% to 5.5% but if the 'rebel' went against the confederate and participant, conformity dropped to 9%
• situational variables - task difficulty

  individuals will look to others more for guidance for the right reponse suggesting that ISI is a dom force

  asch (1956) increased task difficulty by making the comparison lines similar to each other finding that when he did this participants were more likely to conform to wrong answers, showing how conformity can go from nsi -> isi