Evaluation of Asch

Subject  > Social Science Essays  > Psychology

'The Asch Studies' were a series of experiments designed to test humans' tendency for conformity. Asch's work was a direct response to the work of Sherif, although Sherif was technically studying the process of norm formation in new groups. The reason why Asch wanted to improve on Sherif's work is that he believed that Sherif only achieved the results he did due to the ambiguity of the task; in other words, the participants had no idea what the correct answer was and so considered their best bet to agree with everyone else. Asch designed a test in which the correct answer was obvious, and yet all the other so-called participants (really actors and confederates of Asch) declared the same wrong ...

... results despite the absence of the face-to-face aspect which may have been considered intimidating. This proves that what Asch described as 'distortion of action' or is generally known as 'normative conformity', participants conforming simply to fit in, was rare. In the majority of cases where participants conformed, it was due to a personal lack of faith in their own judgement. They were so desperate to choose the right answer that they went with the majority, despite the fact that the other participants would never know that it was them who chose a different answer. As well as the far too narrow sample, the paradigm was not very economical. Not only could only one participant be tested

essay continues for another 100 words