Asch (1951, 1955) - group size, task difficulty, unanimity (one person doesn't conform in a group), aim was to prove that NSI exists. 50 male students from a USA college had to judge which line (a, b, or c) was most similar to the given line, the confederates agreed they would all pick the same obviously wrong line, the ppt was last to say their answer. there were 18 trials in total and the confederates gave the wrong answer 12 of those times (critical trials), the control group was just the ppt w no confederates, Asch measured how many times the ppt conformed to the majority view
he found that the ppt conformed 37% of the time in the critical trials, and over 75% of ppts conformed at least once across the 12 trials
strength - highly controlled, easy to compare results, control group <1% got the answers wrong
weakness - gender bias, only men from a USA college, can't generalise results to women or other ages, cultures, intelligence etc, experiment was conducted in the 1950s which was a much more conformist time, social norms, lacks temporal validity, chance of demand characteristics, lacks ecological validity as the task was too simple, individual differences, some people are more likely to conform than others