Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
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
Hagerty 2
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Hagerty 3
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.