Describe and evaluate Asch research into conformity. This is essentially a full 16-mark question which is all you need for the exam, you can also use it to answer all 4,6,8, 12 mark questions in the exam all you have to do is break it down. (Asch's study)
Describe and evaluate Asch research into conformity. (16 marks)
Asch tested conformity by showing ppts two large white cards at a time. One card had a
standard line and the other card had 3 comparison lines and one of the 3 lines was the same
as the standard line. There were 123 American male students who were individually tested
with 6-8 confederates and were asked which of the 3 lines matched the standard line. There
were 18 trials for each ppt and in 12 of which the confederates answered incorrectly. The
naïve ppts gave wrong answer 36.8% of the time and 75% of all ppts conformed at least
once whereas 25% never. Most ppts they conformed because of NSI.
Asch then further investigated the conditions that may lead to an increase or decrease of
conformity. He investigated this by carrying out variations of his original procedure. The
variations were group size, unanimity and task difficulty. Group size, with 3 confederates,
conformity was 31.8%, but adding more had little effect, a minimum of 3 needed to have an
effect. Unanimity, dissenting confederates were introduced who went against other
confederates. Having a dissenter enabled the naïve ppt to behave more independently
when another disagreed with group, conformity decreased. Task difficulty, they found when
comparison lines were made more similar to baseline, resulting in task getting harder
conformity increased due to ISI as people genuinely not sure and assumed other were right.
A strength of Asch study is he used a laboratory experiment. There are many advantages
and disadvantages to using this research method. Advantages of using a laboratory
experiment in Asch’s case is that he controlled the conditions, and this enabled him to
replicate study if he wished to check for reliability. For example, he controlled the answers
by the confederates, where the naïve participant (NP) sat, the group size and the presence
of a dissenter in some trials. This meant he could establish cause and effect between his IV
(e.g. group size) and the DV (conformity levels). However, there are also disadvantages, such
as because Asch’s study was carried out under controlled laboratory conditions it means it
was an artificial environment. This makes it difficult to relate to real life as judging a line task
is not an everyday task, so it lacks ecological validity.
A limitation Asch’s research is there are ethical issues regarding it. For example, He broke
several ethical guidelines, including: deception and protection from harm. Asch deliberately
deceived his participants, saying that they were taking part in a vision test and not an
experiment on conformity. Although it is seen as unethical to deceive participants, Asch’s
experiment required deception in order to achieve valid results. If the participants were
aware of the true aim they would have displayed demand characteristics and acted
differently. In addition, Asch’s participants were not protected from psychological harm and
many of the participants reporting feeling stressed when they disagreed with the majority.
However, Asch interviewed all of his participants following the experiment to overcome this
issue.
A limitation of Asch’s study is that it cannot be applied to all situations. For example, Perrin
and Spencer repeated Asch’s study but with engineering students in the UK. In a total of 396
trails only 1 student conformed. A possible explanation for the difference is that the
engineering students may have felt more confident in measuring line than the original
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