Solomon Asch – Asch’s Paradigm Experiment (Conformity) |
[A] |
Investigate the existence of conformity. |
[P] |
- Subject was placed into a room with 6 confederates and the experimenter.
- Subject was deceived that the 6 confederates were participants just like them.
- The subject was placed on the second last seat so they will be the second last to give an answer.
- The group of subject and confederates were asked to select the line on the second card that matched the line on the first card.
- There were 18 sets of cards in total, some of which had lines that were completely different in length, others are similar in length.
- Confederates were instructed to answer correctly on some of the cards but answer incorrectly for most.
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[F] |
- 75% conformed at least once to the wrong answer
- 32% conformed to more than half of the wrong answers
- 24% did not conform at all
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[C] |
- Conformity happened
- Those who did not conform sparked further research
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[E] |
- Ecological validity: Low, lab conditions.
- Controlled environment removed confounding variables.
- Meaningless stimuli.
- Gender bias, only male participants were used.
- Culture bias, only population of the US were used.
- Cannot be generalised to all population.
- Ethics: Deception, but subjects were debriefed.
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