What was the hypothesis of Asch conformity experiment?
Asch hypothesized that when confederates (fake participants) uniformly gave a particular response in a group setting, the lone true participant would feel pressure to conform to the group consensus.
What is the Asch experiment and why does the author use it?
The Asch experiment showed that people’s individual perceptions can be influenced by the perceptions of a larger group. Second-person point of view allows the author to explain his own opinions of the experiment. Second-person point of view allows the reader to feel close with the author.
How did Solomon Asch test his hypotheses regarding conformity quizlet?
Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, whereby 50 male students from Swarthmore College in the USA participated in a ‘vision test’. Using a line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates.
What did Asch conclude?
The experiments revealed the degree to which a person’s own opinions are influenced by those of groups. Asch found that people were willing to ignore reality and give an incorrect answer in order to conform to the rest of the group.
What was Asch’s theory?
Asch (1956) found that group size influenced whether subjects conformed. The bigger the majority group (no of confederates), the more people conformed, but only up to a certain point.
Why was Asch’s study unethical?
Finally, Asch’s research is ethically questionable. He broke several ethical guidelines, including: deception and protection from harm. Asch deliberately deceived his participants, saying that they were taking part in a vision test and not an experiment on conformity.
What is Asch’s Configural model?
Asch proposed two models to account for these results: The configural model and the algebraic model (see Figure 1.1). The configural model hypothesizes that people form a unified overall impression of other people; the unifying forces shape individual elements to bring them in line with the overall impression.
What happened in the Asch experiment?
What was Dr Zimbardo trying to learn from this experiment?
According to Zimbardo and his colleagues, the Stanford Prison Experiment revealed how people will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are as strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards.
Why was the Asch conformity experiment unethical?
Although it is seen as unethical to deceive participants, Asch’s experiment required deception in order to achieve valid results. In addition, Asch’s participants were not protected from psychological harm and many of the participants reporting feeling stressed when they disagreed with the majority.
