Social influence - Asch's research Flashcards
what is conformity
- a change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people
what was Asch’s procedure
- 3 lines A,B,C and one stimulus line X
- participants had to match what line matched X
- situation was unambiguous and there was an obvious answer
- 123 male American undergraduates
- participants tested in groups of 6-8
- only one was a genuine participant and sat either last or second to last
- confederates gave scripted answers
what were the findings of Asch’s study
- genuine participants gave wrong answers 37% of the time
- 25% never gave a wrong answer - never conformed
GRAVE evaluation
generalisability
- only tested men, women may be more conformists (Neto 1995)
Reliability
- standardised procedures
- Perrin and spencer (1980) only 1 student conformed in 396 trials - engineering students in the UK
Application
- didn’t explain why people conformed + individual differences
- does provide an idea of being careful around others
Validity
- unrealistic situation and lacked mundane realism
- demand characteristics
- identifying lines was trivial
Ethics
- didn’t gain informed consent
- mislead about confederates
- placed in an anxious situation
How did Asch investigate Group size
- bigger the no. confederates the more people conformed but only up to 16
- optimum conformity with three confederates (37%)
how did Asch investigate unanimity
- introduced a dissenting confederate
- presence of 1 can reduce conformity by 80%
- less need for social group approval with a supporter
how did Asch investigate task difficulty
- greater conformity when the task was more difficult
- informational social influence
when did Asch conducted his original study
1951
when did Asch investigate his variables
1955-1956
