Limitations in Asch's Conformity Experiment

Categories: ConformityPsychology

This academic writing will criticize Asch's 1951 experiment on group conformity. The criticism include lack of ecological underpinnings culture, sex and age of the participant of the experiment as well as the sample bias. According to Hill (2001) the Asch conformity experiment had no ecological underpinnings. This simply means that the experiment and the findings could not apply in most real life situations. This is because the environment under which the experiment was conducted was controlled and there was no room for influence from other factors such as emotions, morals and personal perception.

Further on, the experiment was disregarded by the findings of concurrent experiments which showed that the level of conformity was minimal if the participants wrote down their answers. The findings revealed that the satisfaction of being anonymous reduced the fear of being judged thereby making peer pressure invalid. Moreover the participants were undergraduates and therefore more intelligent than the target population. This may have had an effect on the results.

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According to recent studies, women have been seen to be more conformist than their male counterparts. In addition to this, the experiment was conducted on American subjects. Other factors included the age of the participants which reflected their level of experience in life related matters. As regarding to the experiment, the participants were all male subjects.

In addition to this, they were all considerably young.Critics under this argument state that older participants would have provided better findings since they are more mature and have experienced different life situations. These accompanied by the fact that older people have more mental strength meant that they could have held to their convictions as regarding to what they believed was the true answers to the questions provided (Weiten, 2009).

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However, there is documented (Eysenck, 2004) proof that individuals from collectivistic cultures (Africans) are more likely to conform than their counterparts from individualistic cultures (Americans). These factors show that the results of the experiment were not conclusive as they overlooked other variables as mentioned above.

Updated: Nov 30, 2023
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Limitations in Asch's Conformity Experiment. (2020, May 14). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/aschs-1951-experiment-essay

Limitations in Asch's Conformity Experiment essay
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