Aschs research on conformity Flashcards
what was Aschs aim of the research
asses to what extent people will conform to the opinion of others even in a situation where the answer is certain
what was the method used in his study
sample 50 male students in america who believed they were taking part in a vision test
one naive participant in a room with severn confederates
participant sat second to last
asch used a line judgement task where each person would say out loud which line was most like the example line
correct answer was obvious
asch wanted to see if the participants would conform to the majority view even when the answer was clearly incorrect
what were the findings from his study
conformed to incorrect answers 32% of the trials
74% conformed in at least one
what was the group size variation
group size - conformity increased with group size but stopped up to a point
with three confederates conformity to the wrong answer rose to 31.8%
suggest that most people are very sensitive to the views of others because just 1 or 2 confederates was enough to sway opinion
what was the task difficulty variation
increased difficulty of the line judgement task
conformity increased
situation is more ambiguous when situation becomes harder
unclear to participants what the right answer is
assume other people are right and you are wrong (informational social influence)
what was the unanimity variation
introduced a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates
rate of conformity decreased
appear to free the participant
suggests that influence of the majority depends to a large extent on it being unanimous
give one strength of Ash’s research
research support
strength - support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty
example- Lucas et al asked their participants to solve easy and hard maths problems
participants were given answers from 3 other students (confederates)
participants conformed more with the wrong answers when the problems were harder
shows asch was correct in claiming that task difficulty is one variable that affects conformity
give one limitation of aschs research
artificial situation and task
limitation- task and situation were artificial
participants knew they were in a research study and may have gone along with what was expected (demand characteristics)
Fiske- did not really resemble groups that we experience un everyday life
means that fupundings do not generalise to real world situations
especially those where the consequences of conformity might be important
give one limitation of aschs research
limited application
aschs participants were american men
other research suggests that women may be more conformist
more concerned about social relationships and being accepted - Neto
US are individualist similar conformity studies done in collectivist cultures i have found that conformity rates are higher
ash has findings tell us little about conformity in women and people from some cultures
