asch

• What was the aim of Asch's study?


  investigating to what extent social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform
• What method was used during Asch's study?


  groups of confederates with one participant were asked to match the length of lines on cards, with an obvious answer

  after a few rounds, the confederates started to provide unanimous incorrect answers
• How many critical trials were in Asch's study?


  12 critical trials out of 18
• What percentage of people conformed on average to Asch's study

  32%
• What percentage of people conformed at least once in Asch's study?


  75%
• What percentage of people never conformed in Asch's study?

  25%
• What percentage of people were incorrect in the control conditions?

  0.04%
• What does the low percentage of incorrect answers in the control conditions highlight?


  high reliability - the task is not ambiguous therefore the reason for conformity is normative social influence
• Where did the naive participant sit in relation to the confederates?


  second to last
• How many people took part in Asch's study?

  123 white male volunteer students
• Was the generalisability of Asch's study a strength or weakness and why?


  Weakness - androcentric, ethnocentric, and artificial situation so cannot be generalised to society
• Was the reliability of Asch's study a strength or weakness and why?


  Strength - replicable with similar results because of control conditions therefore more credible

  - demonstrated conformity as it was not an ambiguous task
• What were the control conditions of Asch's study?


  • participants seated in the same position
  • lines tested were the same
  • number of critical trials
• Was the applicability of Asch's study a strength or weakness and why?


  Strength - anonymity variation helps to understand voting behaviours and advertisers can use this information to influence opinions and behaviours
• Was the internal validity of Asch's study a strength or weakness and why?


  Strength - achieved aim as highlighted conformity by the significant difference between 0.04% incorrect in control conditions compared to the 32% conformity in critical trials so Asch was able to establish a cause and effect

  However, 32% is not the majority so results were affected by dispositional factors
• Was the external validity of Asch's study a strength or weakness and why?


  Weakness - Low ecological validity as an artificial experiment

  - Low temporal validity due to updated ethical implications
• Was the ethics of Asch's study a strength or weakness and why?


  Weakness - Deception: believed they were taking a vision test with other naive participants, not confederates

  - Participants interviewed after and showed signs of emotional distress due to ridicule/embarrassment
• Was Asch's study subjective or objective and why?


  Objectivity - The right answer was easily identifiable however due to normative social influence a large amount of participants conformed
• What different variations did Asch perform?


  • Task difficulty
  • Group size
  • Anonymity
  • Unanimity
• Outline the task difficulty variation in Asch's study


  Changed the difference between lines to make the task more/less ambiguous

  Conformity increased as task difficulty increased

  Due to ISI
• Outline the group size variation in Asch's study


  Changed the amount of confederates in groups

  Conformity increased in larger groups up to a point

  Due to NSI

  1 = 3% 2 = 12.8% 3 = 32% 16 = start to decrease

  3 confederates is the optimum
• Outline the anonymity variation in Asch's study


  Participants were asked privately for their opinions

  Conformity decreased to 12.5%
• Outline the unanimity variation in Asch's study


  • One confederate correct throughout = conformity decreased to 5%
  • One confederate gave a different incorrect answer = conformity decreased to 9%

  Removed implicit / explicit pressure
• What year did Asch's study take place?


  1951