Asch Flashcards
when?
1956
what is conformity ?
A form of social influence that results from exposure to a majority position and leads to compliance to that position
What was Asch’s sample ?
123 male students from swarthmore college in America
What were participants told the study was ?
told it was a vision test
What did Asch use for his study?
a line judgement test
what happend in the study (method )?
-real participant in a room with 6 confederates
-real participants always went 2nd to last
-in turn , each participant gave answer verbally
-the correct answer was always obvious
-each participant completed 18 trials
-12 were critical trials
what were the results of Asch’s study ?
-Average level of conformity :33%
-74% conformed on at least 1 critical trial
-26% participants never conformed
Explain Asch’s control group?
-Participents were not exposed to confederates
-proved the test was not hard
-less that 1% conformed
-Essential for establishing a baseline and comparing the level of conformity observed in the experimental group.
What did the participants say when asked why they conformed and what does this prove ?
Asch asked his participants after the experiment to find out why they conformed.
-Most knew the answers were wrong but went along to avoid judgement
-This is called normative social influence
Explain the theory of Asch’s study being a child of it’s time ?
McCarthyism: Heightened fears of social conformity under McCarthyism, where individuals were pressured to conform to anti-communist beliefs.
Explain and describe the studies surronding Asch’s study being a child of its time ?
-1980’s , Pemin and Spencer repeated the experiment using students who were studying science and engineering
-> obtained on 1 conforming response out of 396 trials
- a subsequent study was with youths on probation as participants and probation officers and confederates
->found similar levels to Asch’s study
-> proves people are more likely to conform if not conforming has had a high cost previously .
Explain Asch as having high internal validity ?
There was strict control over extraneous variables, such as timing of assessment and the type of task used. The participants did the experiment before without confederates to see if they actually knew the correct answer, thus removing the confounding variable of a
lack of knowledge. This suggests that valid and reliable ‘cause and effect’ relationships can be established, as well as valid conclusions.
explain asch as a lab experiment
Extraneous and confounding variables are strictly controlled, meaning that replication of the experiment is easy. Successful replication increases the reliability of the findings because it reduces the likelihood that the observed findings were a ‘one-off’.
explain ecological validity and asch
lacks ecological validity – it was based on peoples’ perception of lines and so the findings cannot be generalised to real life as it does not reflect the complexity of real life conformity
explain population validation in asch?
Lacks population validity due to sampling issues - For example, the participants were only American male undergraduates, and so the study was subject to gender bias, where it is assumed that findings from male
participants can be generalised to females
