Solomon Asch (1956)

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  • Created by: Nikki189
  • Created on: 09-05-15 16:24
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  • Asch
    • Aims and Context
      • Asch was interested in how people form opinions
      • Wanted to understand how people participated in the holocaust
      • Conformity is any change in someones behaviour as a result of real pressure
        • Peer pressure
        • Usually changed to behaviour that is deemed to be socially acceptable
      • Important for psychologists to understand conformity
      • Asch looked at conformity, for whether people would conform to the majority even if they knew that it was wrong
      • Jenness 1932-conform to how many beans in jar, discussion of p's
      • Sherif 1932- showed how people would use group opinions as an indicator of what to say when a situation was ambiguous.
      • Asch wanted to see if people would conform even if they knew what they where doing was wrong.
      • However wanted to remove demand characteristics
      • He wanted to see if p's would conform by giving the wrong answer or the correct answer and keep independence
    • Procedures
      • Lab Experiment
      • Student volunteer in 7-9 group of confederates
      • Told taking part in visual judgment
      • 123 male students from 3 unis
      • shown 2 cards
        • 1 had 1 line on it the other had 3 different length lines on it
          • Had to state which of the 3 line matched the height of the single line
      • had to take turns saying which lines matched
      • P's sat 2nd from last seat
      • Confederate answered correct until card 3
      • to avoid suspicion confederates answered correctly on 6
        • 12 out of 18 answered incorrectly
      • After p's interviewed as to why they did/n't conform
    • Findings and Conclusion
      • 75% of the p's conformed atleast once out of 18
      • 25% of the p's did not conform at all
      • of those who did conform they to the group response on 36.8% of the trial
      • No fake response in contorl trial. .1% mistakes
      • conforming p's underestimated the frequency of their conformity
      • Normative social influence
        • p's didn't want to stand out
      • P's who didn't conform at the start maintained their independence.
      • Non-conforms p's believed in own judgement
      • Conforming p's did it because they didn't want to be wrong and ruin results
    • Methodology
      • Ethics
        • no physical harm     +
        • Possible psych harm    -
        • Deception    -
        • Not told the full information about the study -
        • Uninformed consent -
      • Sample
        • sample size-good
        • andocentric    -
        • similar age     -
        • volunteer sample used +
        • Ethnocentric   -
      • Validity
        • Bad pop validity -
        • internal validity good +
        • Lack external validity
        • Lacks mundane realism
        • Artificial setting
      • Reliability
        • Easily be replicated-lab
        • good external reliability-Bond and Smith
        • disagreed by nickleson
    • Alternative reseacrh
      • + Neto- conformity in porugese women. 59% conformed once
      • +Bond and Smith- Meta analysis. individualist and collectivist cultures
      • -Perrin and Spencer- "child of its time"
      • -Nicholson and Cole- Number of incorrect responses less than reported by asch.

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