Findings:

Naïve participants conformed to the wrong unanimous answer on 32% of the critical trials.
74% of participants conformed at least once
26% of participants never conformed. These independent participants were confident in their answer, however they experienced tension and pressure exerted by the majority.

Post Experimental Interviews

Some participants conformed as they believed the answer given by the majority was correct.
Some participants conformed as they didn't want to be excluded or ridiculed by the majority group.
Others conformed as they experienced distortions in their judgement, they thought their answer was inaccurate and yielded to the majority.

Conclusion:

Even in an unambiguous situation, there is a group pressure that forces people to yield to the majority, especially if it is a unanimous majority.
Asch concluded that participants conform for different reasons.
Some experienced normative social influence - they have the feeling to go along with the group norm to avoid rejection.
Some experienced informational social influence - they doubted their own judgement.

Research Methods and Ethical Evaluation

Asch's study has low ecological and population validity as only white male us college students were used.
There is evidence of deception - confederates were being used and confederates deliberately giving wrong unanimous answers. The aim of the confederates was to convince the naïve participants to conform to the majority. Naïve participants didn't know confederates were being used.
There is also further use of deception - they way naïve participants were seated arranged.
Participants were deliberately made to give their answers last to the experimenter. This means the participants are subjected to the confederates wrong unanimous wrong answer.in the line task.
Participants might have experienced psychological stress or harm as revealed by the post experimental interviews. Participants conformed as they didn't want to be excluded or ridiculed by the group.
Participants might have experienced more psychological stress or harm as revealed by the post experimental interviews. Participants conformed as they had doubted their own judgement so yielded to the majority.

	Created by nikeishabk about 10 years ago

Biology, Chemistry and Psychology AQA Psychology (Unit 2 PSYA2 Biological Psychology, Social Psychology and In) Note on Asch's Paradigm Study, created by nikeishabk on 02/03/2014.

Asch's Paradigm Study