Asch’s Procedure AO3

• -One limitation Asch’s research; task & situation were artificial. Participants knew they were in a research study and may’ve gone along with what they thought was expected; demand characteristics. The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and there was no real reason not to conform. Fiske argues that Asch's groups weren't very groupy since they didn't resemble groups that we experience in everyday life. This means the findings don't generalise to real world situations, especially those where consequences of conformity might be important.
• -One limitation of Asch’s experiment; American men. Other research suggests women may he more conformist; they may be more concerned about social relationships and being accepted (Neto). The USA is also an individualist culture (people are more focused on themselves rather than their social group). Conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures (social group is more important then the individual) have found that conformity rates are higher (Bond and Smith). This means that Asch’s findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from other cultures.
• +One strength of Asch’s research; support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty. Lucas asked their participants to solve easy and hard maths problems. Participants were given answers from 3 confederates. The participants conformed more often when the problems were harder. This shows Asch was correct in claiming task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity.
• +-Lucas study found that conformity is more complex then Asch suggested. Participants with higher confidence in their math abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence. This shows that an individual level factor can influence conformity by interacting with situational variables (task difficulty). Asch didnt research the roles of individual factors.