| What was the aim of the study? | To see whether the lone 'real' participant would confomr to social influence and give the wrong answer in a situation where the correct answers were always unambigous. |
| Procedure? | Ppts: 123 male American undergraduate students
Had to took at one card with a vertical line and compare it to another 3 lines and choose the correct one.
Participants took turns calling out the answer, the real participant was 2nd to last.
Confederates gave unanimous wrong answers on12/18 trials, cirtical trials |
| What were findings of Asch's orginial study? | 32% of the naive participants conformed
25% never conformed, independent behaviour
75% of people conformed at least once
50% on 6 or more
5% on every trial.
Only a small amount of people doubted their accuracy of judgement or eye sight |
| Conclusion of Asch's orginial experiment? | Even in unambigious situations there may be strong group pressure to corfrom, especially if the group is a unanimous majority |
| What was the piolet study of Asch? | Piolet study where there was no confederates, mistakes weree made 1% of the time, shows that error can not explain the high level of conformity in the main study |
| What were the 3 variations of Asch's study? | Group size, unanimity, task difficulty |
| What were the results for the group size variation? | Ranged 1-15 confederates
1 confederate: real pariticpant confomed on 3% of the trials
2 confederates: real participant conformed on 12.8% of the trails
3 confederates: confomed on 32% of the trials. (same as original)
Highest confromity level with 3 confederates |
| What were the results of the unanimity variation? | One variation: one of the confederates gave the correct answer, dropped conformity to 5%
Another variation: one of the confederates gave the wrong answer but different to the others, dropped conformity to 9%
Shows that if someone breaks the unanimty of the group, conformity is going to drop too. |
| What were the results of task difficulty variation? | Made it harder by making the lines closer together and the line lengths were smaller. More ambigious. Conformity increased but it is more informational social influence. |
| A strength of Asch's study? | It has high internal vlaidty, takes place in a lab setting. Variables can be manipulated and isolate variables that may affect conformity. |
| A strength of Asch's study? | High reliability, uses standardiesed procedures, this means that it can be replicated and tested for reliability |
| A weakness of Asch's study? | Low ecolgocial validity, this is becuase it took place in a lab and it was an articifical task (lack mundane realism). Can't be applied to real life. |
| A weakness of Asch's study? | Evidence that the situation created was very emotional, increased levels of stress. This goes agaisnt the ethical guidelines that were put out |
| A weakness? | considered a 'child of its time' so its historically biased. Took place in the McCarthysim era so people were natrually conforming more due to fear.
Perrin and Spencer did in in the uk duirng the 1980s with maths and engineering students and found them to conform on 1 out of 396 trials. Shows that conformity was high due to the time in america |
