1) Asch Baseline procedure

Question 1

What did Asch investigate in the baseline procedure

Answer 1

Extent to which people conformed to the opinion of others in situations where they knew they were clearly wrong

Question 2

How many people conformed at least once

Answer 2

75%

Question 3

What three variables did he investigate

Answer 3

• Group size
• Unanimity
• Task difficulty

Question 4

Process and findings of group size

Answer 4

• Asch varied number of confederates between 1-15
• found the relationship between num of confederates and conformity to be curve linear
• 3 confederates had the most significant and major impact - increase in conformity to over 30%, any more after that did not have a major effect

Question 5

Process and findings of unanimity

Answer 5

• Asch introduced a dissenter, sometimes giving the right answer sometimes the wrong but always disagreeing with majority
• Conforming dropped by a quarter
• gave participants confidence to behave independently

Question 6

Process and findings of task difficulty

Answer 6

• Made the line harder to distinguish by making them more similar
• conformity increase due to the task being more ambiguous making people look to others for help

Question 7

EV - Artificial situation and task

Answer 7

• Both the task and situation were artificial which would have led to the subject of demand characteristics
• Fiske argued that alongside this the groups were not very groupy, not very real life like as well as the actual task
• Cannot generalise to everyday life as it does not show what conformity in everyday task are actually like

Question 8

EV - Little application

Answer 8

• As only white American men were tested the findings lack to tell us about the whole global population
• Neto argued women and more likely to conform as well as different cultures such as more collectivist (china) compared to those individualist such as Germany
• Findings tell us little about women and other cultures

Question 9

EV - Research support

Answer 9

• Lucas et al, hard and easy math questions
• Raise in the levels of conformity when the questions were harder
• Gives reliability to Asch’s findings that task difficulty is a variable in social influence