key studies

Question 1

Asch AO1

Answer 1

Procedure: 123 American men in groups with 7 other confederates, had to out loud say what line they thought was most similar, confederates gave wrong answer 12/18 of the trials
Results: av conformity 37% conformed at least once 75%

Question 2

Asch AO3 limitations (4)

Answer 2

• lacked population validity, all were white males of a similar age group
• low ecological validity as the task wasn’t one you would do in real life and the groups weren’t representative of real life either
• demand characteristics, they new they were in an experiment and may have been suspicious of oddness of task
• ethical issue as the participant were decided

Question 3

Asch AO3 strengths

Answer 3

supported by other studies, participants were asked to perform easy and hard maths questions, answers were given by three other ‘participants’, the naive participant conformed more on harder maths questions, this supports task difficulty affects conformity

Question 4

Zimbardo AO1 procedure

Answer 4

Procedure: 21 students who were assessed as emotionaly stable were randomnly assigned to prison/gaurd role and encouraged to conform through instructions about behavoir and uniform and given numbers

Question 5

Zimbardo AO1 resutls

Answer 5

Gaurds took up role with enthusiams, 1/3 brutal 1/3 sypmathetic
By day two the gaurds rebelled very brutalistic often demanding head counts early in the morning

Question 6

Zimbardo AO3 strengths

Answer 6

Internal validity, had control over IV through personality test and randomisation so can assume behaviour is from the role

Question 7

When writing the answer privately what did conformity go down to

Answer 7

13%

Question 8

Asch baseline results

Answer 8

On average pps agreed with the wrong answer 37% of the time, 25% never confirmed

Question 9

Group size variation results

Answer 9

At 3 confederates conformity was at 32% but rose very mildly after up to 15

Question 10

Conformity rate of 3 confederates

Answer 10

32%

Question 11

Zimbardo A03 limitations (2)

Answer 11

• Lack of realism, only pretending to be in the role, not a real prison, this doesn’t tell of about conformity in actual prisons (counter point they felt it was a real prison and 90% of convo were abt prison life)
• Exaggeration the power of roles minimised the influence of dispostional factors as only 1/3 were brutal and could resist
• ethical issues
• lack of external validity small sample of American men

Question 12

The bad ethics in Zimbardo

Answer 12

• participants right to withdraw
• fully informed consent
• no protection from harm

Question 13

Milligram research support

Answer 13

• real puppy shock, 54% of men and 100% of women obeyed
• field experiment where twice as likely to pick up litter if asked by a security guard uniform