Asch

• Asch Aim

  Examine effect of social pressure to conform to a unanimous majority in an ambiguous situation
• Asch Method

  • 123 Male Undergraduate Students from Swarthmore College
  • Told taking part in vision test/visual perception
  • Line judgement task 
  • One naive participant + 6-8 confederates (agreed answer in advance)
  • Participant deceived 
  • Always seated second to last 
  • In order - each person gives answer out loud - which line is closer to comparison line (A B or C)
  • Answer was obvious
  • 18 Trials
  • Confederates gave incorrect answer in 12 critical trials
  • Started by giving correct answers
  • Would participants conform to the obviously incorrect majority answer?
• Asch Results

  • Control group of 36 participants who were tested individually on 20 trials - test how accurate judgements were (0.04%, 3/720 incorrect answers)
  • Conformed to incorrect answer on 32% of critical trials
  • 74% of participants conformed on at least one critical trial
  • 26% never conformed
  • 5% conformed to all 12 wrong answers
  • Half conformed on six or more of critical trials
  • Asch effect used to describe these results
• Asch Conclusion

  • Interviewed as to why they conformed
  • Knew answers were incorrect
  • Went along with group in order to fit in
  • Complied due to normative social influence
  • Publicly changed opinion but did not privately
  • Distortion of action - majority of participants conformed publicly but not privately - avoid ridicule
  • Distortion of perception - perception must actually be wrong so conformed
  • Distortion of judgement - had doubts concerning accuracy of their judgements so conformed to majority view
  • Individual differences in the amount to which people are affected by majority influence
• Evaluation Point 1: Weakness: Child of it's time

  Perrin and Spencer (1980) - Asch style experiment with Engineering Students in UK

  1 conforming response out of 396 trials

  Task difficulty? More confident in abilities

  Historical bias - different era and 30 years apart - Mccarthyism + Red Scare

  Not a fundamental feature of human behaviour

  Lacks temporal validity
• Evaluation Point 2: Weakness: Artificial

  • Lab environment 
  • Artificial task - not reflective of real life
  • Task was trivial - no reason not to conform
  • Know they were in a research study - demand characteristics - lack ecological validity 
  • Lacks mundane realism
  • Not representative of when their are real-life consequences
  • Cannot be generalised to real life - limits use
• Evaluation Point 2 Counter: Strength: Control

  • Experiment in lab environment
  • High control of extraneous variables
  • Ensure it is IV affecting DV
  • Standardised procedure
  • Establish cause and effect
  • High internal validity
• Evaluation Point 3: Strength: Research Support

  • Lucas Et Al (2006) 
  • Asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems
  • Conformed more to wrong answer when it was more difficult 
  • Supports Asch’s explanation of task difficulty
  • Looked to who they perceived as experts and changed answer
  • Also shown in a more realistic environment
• Evaluation Point 3 Counter: Weakness: Research Conclusions

  Lucas Et Al (2006) Ignores individual differences 

  Due to self-efficacy and confidence 

  Participant variables rather than task difficulty

  Therefore, Asch’s research is not a comprehensive account
• Evaluation Point 4: Weakness: Limited Sample

  Limited sample - 123 American Male Students

  Europe + US = 25%

  South America = 37%

  Androcentric

  Beta bias 

  Social glue that binds communities together.

  Cannot be generalised to other cultures

  Neto (1995) - women might be more conformist - more concerned about social relationships 

  Limited applicability to real life