Aasch Flashcards
(12 cards)
What did Asch aim to do?
Asch wanted to investigate whether people would conform to the majority in situations where an answer was obvious.
How many participants were there?
123 students.
What happened in the procedure?
In Asch’s study there were 5-7 participants per group. Each group was presented with a standard line and three comparison lines. Participants had to say aloud which comparison line matched the standard line in length. In each group, there was only one true participant; the remaining 6 were confederates. The confederates were told to give the incorrect answer on 12 out of 18 trials.
What were the findings?
True participants conformed on 32% of the critical trials where confederates gave the wrong answers. Additionally, 75% of the sample conformed to the majority on at least one trial.
Weaknesses of the study? A strength?
This study lacks ecological validity as it was based on people’s perception of lines; this does not reflect the complexity of real-life conformity. There are also sampling issues regarding this study as it was only carried out on men, making the sample gender-biased and lacking population validity. Moreover, there are ethical issues regarding Asch’s study – Mention deception as participants were told the study was about perception of lines. As a result, they could not give informed consent. Furthermore, participants may have felt embarrassed when the true nature of the study was revealed, potentially putting them through some form of psychological harm. However, Asch did debrief at the end.
How should you get an extra AO3 point?
For extra AO3 points, link Asch’s results to theories/reasons why people may conform to the majority. For instance, some participants said they conformed to fit in with the group. This claim coincides (supports) ‘Normative influence,’ which states that people conform to fit in when privately disagreeing with the majority.
Which factors affect conformity?
Group size, group unanimity, difficulty of the task, and answering in private versus public.
How did Asch test the effect of group size in relation to conformity? What did he find? What was considered the optimum? Why?
Asch altered the number of confederates in his study to see how this affected conformity. The bigger the majority group (number of confederates), the more people conformed, but only up to a certain point. With one other person (i.e., confederate) in the group, conformity was 3%. With two others, it increased to 13%, and with three or more, it was 32% (or 1/3). However, conformity did not increase much after the group size was about 4/5. Because conformity does not seem to increase in groups larger than four, this is considered the optimal group size.
Two studies relating to group size and what they found?
Brown and Byrne (1997) suggest that people might suspect collusion if the majority rises beyond three or four. According to Hogg & Vaughan (1995), the most robust finding is that conformity reaches its full extent with a 3-5 person majority, with additional members having little effect.
What did Asch find in relation to group unanimity?
A person is more likely to conform when all members of the group are in agreement and give the same answer. When one other person in the group gave a different answer from the others, and the group answer was not unanimous, conformity dropped. Asch (1951) found that even the presence of just one confederate that goes against the majority choice can reduce conformity as much as 80%.
How did Asch test for the effect of task difficulty? What did he find? Why?
Difficulty of Task: When the (comparison) lines (e.g., A, B, C) were made more similar in length it was harder to judge the correct answer and conformity increased. When we are uncertain, it seems we look to others for confirmation. The more difficult the task, the greater the conformity.
What effect did answering in private have? Why?
Answer in Private: When participants were allowed to answer in private (so the rest of the group does not know their response) conformity decreases. This is because there are fewer group pressures and normative influence is not as powerful, as there is no fear of rejection from the group.
