A03 - Asch's Study

Question 1

Limitation - artificial

Answer 1

• the participants knew they were in a research study therefore they had no reason not to conform.
• Fiske argued that Asch’s groups were not like other groups.
• this means that the behaviour can not be generalised to everyday life.

Question 2

Limitation - little application

Answer 2

• in Asch’s study, the participants were only American men. It is argued that women are more conformist as they are more concerned with social relationships.
• America is also an individualist country and in collectivist countries such as China, conformity rates have found to be higher.
• This suggests Asch’s findings tell us very little on conformity in men and women and in different cultures.

Question 3

Strength - research support for Asch’s findings

Answer 3

• Lucas et al set out a similar study to Asch asking participants easy and hard questions.
• participants conformed more to the harder questions.
• this shows Asch was correct about task difficulty affecting conformity.