Outline and evaluate Aschs study on conformity and Milgrams study on Obedience
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Within the content of this essay, the aims are to outline Asch's 1951 study on Conformity, from the visual-perception experiment on basic line-judging and Milgram's 1963 work on Obedience, which involved 'teachers' administering electric shocks to 'learners'. Perspectives from both studies will be considered, as well as the ethical considerations of both experiments, with direct reference from the British Psychological Society (BPS) ethical guidelines.
So firstly then, Asch's 1951 study on conformity. In 1951 Asch conducted a study based on visual perception. In this study, Asch asked participants to take part in what seemed to be a basic line judging task. The participants were put into groups with complete strangers. Asch failed to inform the research participants that the other 'participants' in the group had already been told to give incorrect answers when they were prompted to do so (Hayes 2000).
The task was, to judge, which line from a selection of three unequal lines was the same as the stimulus line. The task was set up so that the 'real' research participants were placed in either last, or second to last place when giving their answer. Asch found that as each incorrect answer was given by the others in the group, the 'real' participants appeared to be becoming more and more anxious about giving their own answer, to the extreme that in one out of three trials, they would also give the wrong answer (Hayes 2000), even though they were well aware that the answer they were giving was the wrong one...