Asch 1951

• Opportunity sample

  A sample that is readily available and convenient for the researcher to use
• Allocation Procedure

  1. Asch used a line judgement task

  2. Placed real naïve participants in a room with 7 confederates (actors)

  3. Confederates had agreed their answers in advance

  4. Real participant was deceived and led to believe the others were also real participants

  5. Real participant always sat second to last

  6. Groups were shown 2 cards, one with 3 lines of different lengths, another with a comparison line

  7. In turn, each person had to say OUT LOUD which line (A, B or C) was most like the target line in length

  8. Each naive participant was tested 18 times

  9. 12 out of 18 trials were critical trials (confederates gave a unanimous wrong answer)

  10. 6 out of 18 were non-critical trials (confederates gave different wrong answers)
• Asch interviewed his participants after the experiment to find out why they conformed
• Most of the participants said that they knew their answers were incorrect, but they went along with the group in order to fit in, or because they thought they would be ridiculed
• Sample 50 male students from Swarthmore College in America
• Aim 

  • Asch wanted to examine the extent to which social pressure from a majority, could affect a person to conform
• Results

  • Naive participants gave a wrong answer 32% of the time 
  • 74% of particpants conformed at least once 

  25% never conformed/ gave a wrong answer.
• Strengths

  • Testing conformity in a laboratory environment provides control over variables that could have affected the dependent variable of the number of incorrect responses given by the participants. ⇒ increases internal validity 
  • Asch replicated his research several times creating different variations which all supported his initial findings that the minority would conform to a majority increasing reliability of his 1951 study.
• Weaknesses

  • Asch’s (1951) experiment lacks population validity as he did not use female participants in his sample therefore his results lack generalisability as he cannot conclude that women would conform the same as men. 
  • Judging line lengths is not a realistic way to measure conformity therefore Asch’s (1951) experiment lacks task (internal) validity as a line task cannot be generalised to conformity examples in real life.