Essay
Asch's research into conformity - A03 ONLY
- Module
- Social Influence
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- AQA
This document shows evaluation (A03) worth 10 marks for a potential 16 marker on Asch's study into conformity
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Outline and Evaluate Asch’s research into conformity (16 Marks)A03 -
One weakness of Asch’s research is that it lacks temporal validity as it was conducted in the 1950s in
a particularly conformist time in America, where it was the social norm to conform. Therefore, this
suggests that it may be a representation of conformity in that era but may not represent conformity
now. Perrin and Spencer (1980) replicated the study 30 years later using engineering students in the
UK, they were more confident and less conformist. Therefore, this is evidence for the lack of
temporal validity in the original study as it does suggest that conformity rates decreased as it shows
students were more confident than wanting to conform.
Another weakness of this research is that it used an artificial task which therefore means that it lacks
mundane realism and therefore this may be an issue because even though they have conformed in
the artificial task it does not mean they would conform in a more realistic task. Also, they knew they
were in a research study so this may have led to demand characteristics such as agreeing on an
opinion which they do not think to fit in and conform more as they think that is correct. This could
be a weakness because the demand characteristics could act as a confounding variable in the study
meaning it would lack internal validity making us unsure whether we were measuring the conformity
we were meant to. Also, it may lack ecological validity as the groups were deemed to not be very
representative of the sort of groups you would have in a real-life case and there were no real
consequences of conformity, which there may have been in real life. This would therefore be an
issue as it may be representing conformity in this artificial situation but may not be measuring
conformity in a real-life situation.
A further issue is that the studies only used male participants which means it is androcentric, this
therefore means that the findings of his research may not be applicable to women. If we generalise
it to women, it would be a beta bias whereby we would be minimising the differences between men
and women. Therefore, this means that by only using males it is misrepresenting women to assume
they would conform in the same way. Therefore, this study should only be applied to men not a
representation of everyone. Any conclusions from the study into conformity should only be applied
to men.
Also, all the participants were from the United States which is an individualistic culture, where the
focus is on the individual, not the group. When it was repeated in collectivist culture e.g., China,
where the group is more important than the individual, the conformity was higher. This therefore
shows that this study is culture biased and it may be just individualistic culture shown and
misrepresents collectivist culture to assume they would conform in the same way, but we should
therefore not assume. It therefore suggests that the original research was culture biased, and if we
try to generalise it, it will be an imposed etic as we would be assuming that the conformity findings
can be applied to all cultures which would not be accurate. It would also be beta bias as we are
minimising the differences between cultures and that they would conform the same.
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