1) Artificial situation and task.
- it was a lab experiment so doesn’t reflect real life
- Demand characteristics as participants knew they were in a research study
- judging length of lines is a trivial task. Conformity would drop on a more real life task such as making a decision in a jury.
- This is a limitation as it can’t be generalised with real life where consequences for conformity are more important.Therefore, it lacks ecological validity
2) child of its time
- The styudy was carried out in history of USA where conformity was high becuase people conformed as its was a social norm.
- Perin and spencer replicated ash's study with engineering students and conformity rates were only 1 of 396 trials becasue they were confident in thier judgement. this is a limitation as it questions the reliablity of asch's study.
3) Cultural
- USA is an individualistic culture where people are concerned with themselves then social group. whereas in a collectivist cultures such as china conformity will be higher where social groups are more important than an individual.This is a limitation as ash's findings can 't be generalised with people outside USA.
4) Eithical Issues
- it didnt provide fully informed consent and deception
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