Asch's research into conformity

Question 1

What type of experiment did Asch originally use?

Answer 1

• Lab

Question 2

What was the IV?

Answer 2

• The type of trial

Question 3

What was the DV?

Answer 3

• Conformity Levels

Question 4

Explain his procedure.

Answer 4

• 123 American Participants.
• Two white cards, one with three lines, one with one line - participants were asked to say, out loud, which lines matched.
• Participants were tested in groups of 6 to 8, yet only one genuine participant was in each group and were seated last or second to last.
• All other members were confederates who gave the same wrong answer.
• Each participant completed 18 trails.

Question 5

Explain his findings.

Answer 5

• 75% of participants conformed
• 25% did not conform
• 36.8% out of the 75% conformed at least once
• Used a control group without any confederates and found that less than 1% gave an incorrect answer
• Interviewed participants and found that they knew their answers were wrong yet wanted to fit in so they gave the incorrect answer.

Question 6

Explain his conclusions.

Answer 6

• The judgement of individuals are impacted by majority opinions, even when the majority are obviously wrong.
• The participants conformed due to Normative Social Influence and the desire to fit in and avoid rejection.

Question 7

Give two evaluative point which criticize Asch’s study.

Answer 7

• Participants were put through psychological harm. They were put under the stress of having to decide whether to publicly agree or disagree with the group majority - not ethical.
• Not representative of everybody - can’t generalize to females to Non-Americans - Eagly and Carli (1981) carried out meta-analysis and found that women are more likely to conform than men.
• America is an individualistic culture, meaning that people are more concerned with their own thoughts- Can’t generalize - Bond and Smith (1996) found that collectivist cultures like China had higher Conformity rates.

Question 8

Give a points which praises Asch’s study.

Answer 8

• It was artificial - the experiment was very controlled which makes it easy to replicate and makes it very reliable.