Hagerty 1

James Hagerty
Mrs. Buescher
AP Psychology
March 13th 2015

Please PRINT your essay for the following prompt and bring it to class on Friday!

We conducted a variation of Aschs (1951) conformity study in which participants made judgments about
the length of lines. We randomly assigned participants to one of two conditions and told them that the
study involved perceptual abilities. In the first condition, participants estimated the length of lines after
hearing five people pretending to be participants (confederates) give inaccurate estimates. In the second
condition, participants estimated the length of lines without hearing estimates of confederates. As we
expected, participants in the first condition were less accurate in their estimates of line length,
demonstrating the tendency to conform to majority influence.

A) How would each element below be related to the specific content of the experiment reported in the
abstract?
Control group
Deception
Operational definition of the dependent variable
Hypothesis
Debriefing

B) How might participants estimates of line length in the study be related to the following?
Cognitive dissonance
Maslows hierarchy of needs

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Would you Conform?

As read in the above prompt, an experiment is conducted regarding peoples ability to

judge the length of some basic lines. Many of the subjects heard what the fake measurements
were and simply went off of those, rather than taking a look for themselves. Whereas the group
that didnt even hear the fake measurements was by far more accurate in their overall
measurements.
Being in the control group, or the unchanged group helps add a safe base to compare too,
and not only work with a single group, it adds a level of validate to the experiment. Deception, or
not telling the truth, would affect the experiment in a positive way, if we told the subjects
everything about the experiment, they would be sure to not use the fake measurements. A
dependent variable, or the variable that is dependent on other things and being affected, in this
case, the dependent variable is peoples measurements when their honesty is tested. Having a
hypothesis helps you define in a simple coherent way what we are looking for in this experiment.
By debriefing our subjects, it makes the experiment far more ethical and more appropriate
according to the standards set forth for us.
Subjects measurements may not have been necessarily related to their honesty, there are
other factors that could have played a large hand, for example: being cognitively dissonant, or
the state of having inconsistent thoughts or beliefs can really jumble someones thoughts and

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make it difficult to not succumb to someone elses advice or answers on a topic. Furthermore,
Maslows Hierarchy of Needs can be seen playing a big role here, in the sense that people
desired acceptance and being wanted, by ling about their measurements and getting a closer
result to someone, you form an unspoken bond, you have a sudden relation and a talking point.
Some people may just lie about their scores, simply because its a human desire to feel wanted
and accepted.
This experiment was very interesting while it did have some flaws and points in it that
can be argued as just coincidence or other factors; most of it seems valid and applicable to the
situation.