ASCH's RESEARCH

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  • Created by: floberry1
  • Created on: 16-05-17 15:28
what was the task that the participants had to complete
they had to guess which of three lines on a comparison board was the same length as the line on the original board.
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how different were the other two lines on the comparison board? i.e. how obvious was the answer
substantially different, the answer was fairly clear each time.
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who were the participants?
all male, university students.
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how many naive participants were there in each experiment?
only one, the rest were always confederates.
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did the confederates start making errors right at the beginning of the trial?
no, they answer correctly for the first few.
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what % of the time did the participant give the wrong answer?
36.8%
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what percent of the participants did not conform at all?
25%
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what does that mean in terms of the rest of the ppts?
75% of them conformed at least once.
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why did the participants say they conformed?
to avoid rejection!
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what were the 3 variations asch carried out of his study?
group size, unanimity, task difficulty
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what did he find about the effect of group size on conformity?
a small majority has little effect whereas 3 or more has a higher impact. however increasing the group size beyond 3 makes little difference.
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what did asch do to test the effect of unanimity?
he added a confederate who disagreed with the majority. the dissenter was either correct or incorrect but he was always disagreeing.
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what result did having a dissenting confederate have?
conformity dropped by 25% from when the majority was unanimous
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how did asch increase the task difficulty?
he reduced the difference between the comparison lines making them more similar and less easy to judge.
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what did he find once he had done this?
the levels of conformity rose significantly
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what does this suggest?
suggests that ISI plays an important role when the task becomes more ambiguous and less obvious.
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who carried out a repeat of Asch's study at a later date?
Perrin and Spencer.
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who did they use as their participants?
engineering students?
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what was the result?
only 1 person conformed in 396 trials!
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why does this limit the reliability of Asch's study?
because it suggests that it was only relevant in the decade that it was conducted (1950's) and may not be applicable now.
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what is another criticism of the study?
guessing the length of a line is a very artificial task and the conformity may just have been a result of demand characteristics.
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and what about the groups he chose? were they very representative of real life situations?
no they weren't, the participants didn't know each other and were simply performing artificial tasks together therefore the findings have limited real life application.
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and another limitation of the sample Asch chose
they were all male, all university students and all in a similar age group therefore the results aren't generalisable
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why might conformity be higher in a group of friends than in a group of strangers?
the level of NSI would be higher because you're more likely to want to fit in with a group of people you like and respect than people you don't know or care about.
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what is the ethical issue associated with Asch's study
the participants were deceived because they thought the confederates were also participants
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does this ethical issue compromise the validity of the study?
no
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

how different were the other two lines on the comparison board? i.e. how obvious was the answer

Back

substantially different, the answer was fairly clear each time.

Card 3

Front

who were the participants?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

how many naive participants were there in each experiment?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

did the confederates start making errors right at the beginning of the trial?

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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