C: Ash's study

• 3 Limitations of Asch's Study

  1. Child of the time (old)

  2. Artificial tasks

  3. Gender
• Asch's study into: task difficulty

  made the task more difficult and found that conformity increased

  - suggests that informational social influence plays a greater role when task becomes harder.(participants look for guidance)

  
• Asch's research into : Unanimity

  "if the presence of another non-conforming would effect conformity"

  - the presence of a dissenting character reduced conformity by 1/4

  -enabled the pp to behave independently (influence of the majority depends one the group being unanimous)

  
• Asch's research into: Group size

  With 3 confederates conformity rose to 31.8%

  - addition of more confederates made little difference (extremes are insufficient in exerting influence)

  
• What were Asch's 3 variations of the study?

  1. group size

  2. Unanimity

  3. Task difficulty
• Asch's findings on conformity

  Naive participants gave the wrong answer 36.8% of the time 25% didn't conform

  Asch effect --> the extent to which the participants conform even when the situation is unambiguous to avoid rejection (normative social influence)

  
• what was Asch's procedure?

  123 American male undergraduates.

  - One card 'standard line' and other 'comparison lines'

  - one line was clearly wrong

  - tested in a group with 6- 8 confederates

  - each participant took part in 18 trails and on 12 trails the confederates gave the wrong answer