Asch's Research

• What was the aim of Asch's research?


  To investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform
• What is the procedure of Asch's research?


  • Lab experiment
  • 50 male students from Swarthmore College thought they were partaking in a vision test - used a line judgement task to match a line to the target line length
  • Asch placed a naive participant with 7 confederates (actors planted by researchers and agreed on the answers beforehand)
  • Had to state which line was most like the target line (obvious) and the pps always went last
  • Each participant completed 18 trials and confederates gave wrong answers for 12 trials - CRITICAL TRIALS
  • Control condition = no confederates
• What were the results of Asch's line test?

  • Naive pps gave the wrong answer on 32% of critical trials
  • 25% did NOT conform at all
  • 75% of pps conformed at least once
  • Pps interviewed afterwards mostly said they conformed to avoid rejection (NSI)
• What is the Asch Effect?

  The extent pps conform even when the situation is unambiguous
• What are Asch's variations of the study?

  • GROUP SIZE - increase of 16 confederates vs. 1 pps = 31.8% increase in conformity
  • After 3 actors the increase in group size does not impact conformity too much
  • TASK DIFFICULTY - more difficult to differentiate the line length = increase in conformity
  • UNANIMITY - all agree on the same result = 25% increase in conformity as confidence in more difficult tasks decrease so look to others (ISI)
  • DISSENTER present = 25% decrease in conformity
• What is the strength of Asch's study?

  • Perrin and Spencer (1981) - Repeated experiment on young offenders on probation and probation officers (the confederates)
  • Found similar level of conformity - due to authority over pps
• What are the weaknesses of Asch's study?

  • Biased sample - only used males so it cannot be generalised to everyone
  • Artificial task - line judgements lack mundane realism
  • Lacks temporal validity - conducted in the 1950s when society was more conforming (outdated)
  • Ethical issues - Deception and Protection from harm (pps cannot give true consent)