Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Evaluation of
Asch's Study
- Low Temporal
Validity
- McCarthyism
- During this time period (1950's) through America
there was lots of questioning and accusations that
you would have been a communist or sympathetic to
communists, therefore meaning that it lacks temporal
validity as it was a time of greater conformity.
Affecting the way in which the participants would
have reacted to the task and each other.
- Making people reluctant to stand
out from the crowd, hence
meaning that there was an
increased amount of compliance.
- Less generalisable as it was
at a time where more people
would have conformed.
- Ecological
Validity
- Laboratory Experiment
- It is an artificial set up that
could cause artificial results
- They may have behaved differently to
how they would have done if they
were around work partners or friends.
- It has greater
reproducibility so can be
tested to see if correct.
- Meaning it may be more
reliable as you are able to
repeat and check the
findings of Asch.
- The procedure was
the same for
everybody.
- Lacking in Mundane Realism
- The task wasn't a natural task
- The results cant be generalised
to other life situations.
- Population Validity
- All of the 123 participants were
male college students from
America
- This was a biased sample
- Cannot be
generalised
to how
women,
children or
those whom
are older
would have
reacted.
- Use of a bad and
un-generaliseable
sample
- Smith and Bond (1998) A
meta-analysis of research
- Meta-Analysis of
studies on conformity.
- Collectivist countries (such
as Japan) showed greater
conformity than those from
Individualist countries
(such as US and UK)
- The impact of cultural variables
on conformity levels was greater
than any other variable (eg.
gender)
- Similarities with Asch Study
- Conformity was higher
with larger majority
sizes
- Conformity was higher with a greater
proportion of female participants
- The more ambiguous the task, the higher the
levels of conformity in all of the (individualist
and collectivist)
- Limitations
of analysis
- Not all cultures are all individualist
people and all collectivist people.
There is participant variability.
- Ethical Issues
- The participants were told that they were taking part
in a 'vision test', therefore meaning that they have
been deceived of the true intentions of the experiment
- Making it more reliable
as they are not playing
up to how they should
be behaving (demand
characteristics)
- They weren't told
the full extent of the
experiment
meaning that they
were treated
ethically wrong