Social influence : key studies (asch)

Question 1

What was the aim of asch’s study?

Answer 1

-to discover if participants will conform to a group even of the answer is obvious

Question 2

What was the sample of asch’s study?

Answer 2

-123 us male volunteers

Question 3

What was the procedure of asch’s study?

Answer 3

-participants sit in a room with between 6-8 confederates
-participant is given a line length judging task
-asked to say aloud which line matches line X

Question 4

what were the 3 variables affecting conformity rates?

Answer 4

.group size
.unanimity of the majority
.task difficulty

Question 5

What did asch find from the study as a whole?

Answer 5

-naive participants agreed with confederates incorrect answered on 37% of trials -about a 1/3
-75% conformed at least one
-5% conformed every time
-most said they conformed to avoid rejection

Question 6

what did asch find from the group size?

Answer 6

.if majority was less than 3 -conformity was 0%
.if majority was equal to 3 -conformity was 1/3
.if majority was greater than 3 -conformity stayed at a 1/3

Question 7

what did asch find from the unanimity of majority?

Answer 7

.if confederate gave correct answer -conformity dropped to 5.5%
.if confederate gave an incorrect answer -conformity dropped to 9%
.asch concluded that it’s breaking the unanimity of the majority that gives psychological power to resist conformity

Question 8

how did asch make the task harder?

Answer 8

.made the lines closer together

Question 9

What did asch’s study conclude?

Answer 9

-people conform to fit in (evidence for compliance and normative social influence)

Question 10

What are some strengths to asch’s study?

Answer 10

-highly controlled lab study, has good face validity as in the control group there was less than 1% error

Question 11

What’s a negative to asch’s study?

Answer 11

-lacks generalisablity and population validity (study done on US men)
-task and situation were artificial (don’t represent a natural task where conformity would occur) -compromising external validity
.demand characteristics (p’s knew they were in a study) -reducing validity

Question 12

What were some of asch’s variations?

Answer 12

-number of confederates varied from 1-16 (conformity increased with higher presence of confederates).
-difficulty of task (conformity increased)