Asch

• PROCEDURE

  • 123 Male US undergraduates took part in a laboratory experiment.
  • Told the study was on visual perception.
  • 7-9 people sat looking at a display and had to say out loud which one of 3 lines A, B or C was the same as a given stimulus line.
  • The correct answer was always obvious (unambiguous).
  • All participants, except for 1, were confederates (accomplices) who were working for Asch and gave same incorrect answer on 12/18 critical trials.
• FINDINGS

  • 37% of the critical trials were conformed on.
  • 75% of the participants conformed to at least one wrong answer, leaving 25% of participants who never gave a wrong answer.
  • 5% of the participants conformed to all wrong answers.
• Task difficulty variation


  making the stimulus line and the comparison lines similar to each other in lengths - participants were

  more likely to conform (situation is more ambiguous)
• Group size variation


  varying the number of confederates (1-15) - Group size is important but only to a certain point.
• Unanimity variation


  introduced a confederate who disagreed with the others - Breaking the groups unanimity was the major factor in conformity reduction.
• Asch strength


  Methodology – A strength of Asch’s methodology is that he conducted a controlled laboratory experiment. This meant that Asch could control his variables completely.
• Asch Limitation


  Asch’s research may represent ‘a child of its time’ – It is possible that these findings are unique because the research took place in a particular period of history in the USA when conformity was high