Social Influence - Asch's Research - 1951.

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What did Asch use in his experiment?
Tested conformity by showing participants 2 cards, 1 with a standard line and 1 with 3 comparison lines. 1/3 of the lines matched the standard line and the others were clearly wrong. Participants were asked which lines matched.
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How many participants were used and how were they tested?
123 male undergrads who were naive participants, tested individually in a group with 6-8 confederates who were told to give wrong answers. Each participant did 18 trials and 12 critical trials.
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What did Asch find?
Naive participant gave wrong answer 36.8% of times. 25% didn't conform at all. 75% conformed at least once. The results are described by the term "Asch effect". When participants were interviewed after, most said they conformed so weren't rejected.
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What's Asch's 1st variation?
GROUP SIZE- Wanted to know if size of group is more important than agreement of group. Found with 3 confederates, conformity to wrong answers rose to 31.8% but adding further confederates made little difference.
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What's Asch's 2st variation?
UNANIMITY- Wanted to know if the presence of a non-conformer would affect naive participant. Introduced a confederate who disagreed with others. Conformity reduced a quarter of the level it was at when the majority was unanimous. Allowed independance
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What's Asch's 3st variation?
TASK DIFFICULTY- made task harder by making the lines more similar in length and found conformity increased, suggesting ISI plays a greater role when tasks are hard as t becomes ambiguous.
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Give a limitation.
Perrin & Spencer repeated the original study with engineering students in the UK and only 1 conformed out of 396 trials, maybe because these students felt more confident about measuring lines, and in America, these were conformist times.
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Give a 2nd limitation.
Artificial situation and task as participants may have just been going along with demand characteristics and although they were put into groups, it didn't really resemble their everyday groups.
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Give an ethical issue.
Participants were deceived as they thought confederates were also genuine participants.
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Card 2

Front

How many participants were used and how were they tested?

Back

123 male undergrads who were naive participants, tested individually in a group with 6-8 confederates who were told to give wrong answers. Each participant did 18 trials and 12 critical trials.

Card 3

Front

What did Asch find?

Back

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Card 4

Front

What's Asch's 1st variation?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What's Asch's 2st variation?

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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