Asch's research

• Artificial situation and task

  One limitation of Asch's research is that the task and situation were artificial.

  Participants knew they were in a research study and may simply have gone along with what was expected (demand characteristics). The task of identifying lines was relatively trivial and therefore there was really no reason not to conform. Also, according to Susan Fiske (2014), Asch's groups were not very groupy', i.e. they did not really resemble groups that we experience in everyday life.

  This means the findings do not generalise to real-world situations, especially those where the consequences of conformity might be important.
• Has Limited application

  Another limitation is that Asch's participants were American men. Other research suggests that women may be more conformist, possibly because they are concerned about social relationships and being accepted (Neto 1995). Furthermore, the US is an individualist culture (i.e. where people are more concerned about themselves rather than their social group). Similar conformity studies conducted in collectivist cultures (such as China where the social group is more important than the individual) have found that conformity rates are higher (Bond and Smith 1996, see page 123 for a discussion of individualist/collectivist).

  This means that Asch's findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures.
• Support from Lucas Et Al

  One strength of Asch's research is support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty.

  For example, Todd Lucas et al. (2006) asked their participants to solve 'easy' and 'hard' maths problems. Participants were given answers from three other students (not actually real). The participants conformed more often (i.e. agreed with the wrong answers) when the problems were harder. This shows Asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity.
• Counterpoint - complex more than Asch thought

  However, Lucas et al's study found that conformity is more complex than Asch suggested. Participants with high confidence in their maths 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 (e.g. task difficulty). But Asch did not research the roles of individual factors.