Weaknesses

    Cards (15)

    • E1-Asch's research has been criticised for having an artificial task and situation.
    • E1- Ppts knew they were in a research study and therefore may have just gone along with demands of the situation (demand characteristics.) Identifying how long a line is, is a trivial task so there wasn't really a reason to not conform.
    • Conformity in real life:
      Typically in social situations, relating to real life behaviours. The task in Asch's study is unrepresentative of typical, daily tasks in which people conform as we do often look for others for matching line lengths.
    • This suggests that the study cannot be generalised to real life situations, especially when the consequences of conformity is important when we interact with people in a more realistic way.
    • W2- A problem with Asch's research is that only American males were included as ppts.
    • Other research suggests that women might be more conformist than men because they are more concerned about relationships and being accepted(Neto,1995.) Also, America is an individualist country (here people are more concerned about their own needs rather than the social group.) Studies conducted in collectivist cultures(where the social group is much more important than the individual), such as China, found conformity rates are higher.
    • This suggests that findings can only apply to male undergraduate students from individualistic cultures.
      This means the researcher lacks population validity, which can be used universally to explain conformity.
    • W3: Asch's research study has been criticised for being 'a child of its time.'
    • Perrin and Spencer(1980) repeated the study with engineering students in the UK. Only one student conformed in a total of 396 trials. It is possible that 1950's America was a much more conformist time than 1980s UK, and it was the social norm to conform then. Society has now changed, and people may be less conformist now.
    • 1950s USA: America was a post WW2 society. At this time, it is thought that people were more conformist. People in America are less likely to conform nowadays.
    • This suggests that conformity is not consistent across different situations and times, and is not a fundamental feature of human behaviours. This provides a lack of temporal validity.
    • W4: Another problem which links to Asch's research is the ethical issues which are involved in the research.
    • Asch's research is ethically questionable as he broke several ethical guidelines, including deception and protection from harm.
    • Asch deliberately deceived his ppts, telling them they were completing a vision test. Although it is seen as unethical to deceive ppts, Asch's experiment required this to achieve valid results. If ppts were aware of the true aim, they may have displayed demand characteristics which would have reduced validity of findings.
    • Also, Asch's ppts were not protected from psychological harm and many of the ppts reported feelings stressed when they disagreed with the majority. However, Asch interviewed his ppts following the experiment to overcome this issue.