Asch's Line Experiment

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Asch's Line Experiment

Advantages

  • It's a lab experiment so that means it can easily be replicated.
  • It proved the aim that people give into social pressure.

Disadvantages

  • With it being a lab experiment this means that it lacks ecological validity.
  • Conformity rate in 1950's America will have been very different to what it would be nowadays.
  • It's a biased sample. Only white, American men around the same age range were chosen so it's not generalisable to the wider populous.
  • Perrin and Spencer's study in 1980 with British engineering students goes completely against Asch's study as there was only a 1% conformity rate.
  • It is an artificial study and so results are not reliable. The task was not an everyday task people would have to make a choice in.

Evaluation

Overall, this experiment doesn't explain why people may yield to social conformity. It is heavily criticised and some psychologists have called it the child of it's time.

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