Asch's Research

avatar
Created by
sim

Cards (7)

  • 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    • Lacks temporal validity - conducted in the 1950s when society was more conforming (outdated)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)