Asch’s study

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• Asch conducted a study to investigate conformity which is how individuals respond to group pressure.

• He tested 123 American male students using a line judgement task.

• Each participant was placed in a group with 6-8 confederates who were instructed to give the same incorrect answer on 12 out of 18 trials.

• The naive participant was always last or second to last to answer

• The results showed that participants conformed to the incorrect majority on 36% of the clinical trials.

• However, 25% of participants never conformed while 75% conformed at least once.

• Asch concluded that people are significantly influenced by group pressure even in ambiguous situations though some show independence by resisting conformity.

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• One major weakness of Asch’s study is that his findings may be culturally biased.

• The original study was conducted in the USA who have an individualist culture.

• Later research found that people in collectivist cultures like china show high levels of conformity.

• This suggests that cultural values influence conformity rates

• People in collectivist cultures are more focused on group harmony so they conform more while individualist cultures promote independence.

• Therefore, Asch’s findings may not apply universally limiting their generalisability across cultures.

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• A further limitation is that the study used a limited and biased sample.

• Asch only used male American college students who were all from similar backgrounds,

• This men’s the findings may not apply to women, older people or those from different cultural groups.

• Other studies have suggested that women may conform more in public situations due to social role explanations.

• This weakens the population validity of the study, meaning the results cannot be easily generalised to the wider population.

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• The study also raises ethical concerns due to its use of deception.

• Participants were misled about the true aim and believed the confederates were other genuine participants.

• They also may have felt stressed or embarrassed when giving an answer they knew was wrong.

• Although depletion and harm are ethical issues, Asch’s study was necessary to uncover real conformity behaviours.

• Participants were also debriefed after the experiment, which helps to reduce any long term impact.

• While the study is ethically questionable, it provided important insights into human behaviour.