ASCH

• Asch investigated normative social influence in his line study
• 1= This lab study involved a naive participant being placed in a room with a group of confederates, they were then asked to publicly judge the length of a standard line to 1 of 3 control lines
• 2= However the confederates all purposely gave the incorrect answer before the naive participant had answered.
• 3= Asch then measured how many of the participants conformed and gave the wrong answer despite the task being unambiguous, and these results were compared to a control trial in which no confederates were present.
• Findings 1= Results showed that in the control trials, participants gave the wrong answer 0.7% of the time, demonstrating that the task is unambiguous
• Findings 3- Asch concluded that these results suggest that the naive participant conformed due to normative social influence
• Advantages- lab study so highly controlled, this means that any effects of extraneous variables is minimised, allowing Asch to more accurately assume cause and effect between social influence and conformity rates.
• Advanatage- In addition to this the study being highly controlled means it is easily replicable, allowing other researchers to replicate the study and check the findings for reliability
• Disadvantage- However, because it was a lab study the experiment took place in an artificial setting so may lack ecological validity, as the findings may not apply to conformity in the real world.
• Disadvantage- In addition there are also ethical issues with the study as participants were decieved throughout by not being told the true nature of the study e.g that the other participants were actually confederates. This means that the participants could not have given informed consent, and thus the study may be difficult to replicate today to check the findings for reliability.