social influence Flashcards
(13 cards)
who was tested in Asch’s procedure
123 American men
what as Asch’s baseline procedure
each ppt saw two cards on each trial one with a standard line and another with three comparison lines, with one of the comparison lines clearly being the same length as the standard line. on each trial the ppt had to say out loud which line was the length of the standard line.
what was the physical arrangement of ppts in the study
The participants were tested in groups of 6-8, and only one was a real participant who was always seated last or next to last
What are the baseline findings of Asch’s experiment
the participants conformed to the wrong answer 37% of the time. 25% of the participants never conformed
what three variables did Asch investigate
group size, unanimity and task difficulty
group size
Asch varied confederate numbers from 1 - 15, conformity increased with group size up to a certain point. With three confederates conformity rose but any more and it levelled off and made no difference.
what do the group size findings suggest
That people are sensitive to the views of others as just one or two confederates was enough to sway the opinion
unanimity
he introduced a confederate who disagreed with the other confederates. the participant conformed less often in the presence of a dissenter. this was true even if the confederate gave a different incorrect answer
task difficulty
Asch increased the difficulty of the line-judging task and found that conformity increased. this is because the situation is ambiguous and it is natural to look to other people for help.
one limitation of Asch’s study
the task and situation were artificial. participants knew they were in a research study, even if they thought it was on memory and therefore may have displayed demand characteristics. identifying lines is a also a trivial task so there was no reason not to conform. Asch’s groups also didn’t resemble everyday groups that we might encounter so the findings cannot be generalised to real life situations especially where conformity is important
one limitation of Aschs study
limited application, the participants were American men and research shows that women may be more conformist because they are more concerned about social relationships and being accepted. furthermore the US is an individualist culture, therefore may not be generalisable to collectivist cultures like China for example where the social group is more important
therefore, the findings tell us little about factors affecting conformity in other cultures and among women.
one strength of ashs study, with counterpoint
Supporting evidence for task difficulty
Lucas et al asked ppts to solve easy and hard maths questions and the ppts were given answers from three other students, the participants conformed more often when the questions were harder
however the study found that conformity is more complex than Asch suggested participants with high confidence on their maths abilities conformed less than those with low confidence.
