What are the ethical concerns in Asch?

Answer 1

The main ethical issue to consider in Asch's study is decieving the participants and therefore the lack of informed consent (however, he needed to do this otherwise his results wouldn't have been valid) as well as debriefing. The study may also have caused the participants to experience some distress because when they were debriefed afterwards and found out the aim, they may have felt very embarrassed and mad that they weren't told about it before.

Answer 2

The main ethical concern in Asch's conformity experiments is the use of deception, as participants were misled about the true purpose of the study. This raises issues related to informed consent and the potential for psychological harm or stress in participants who may have felt pressured to conform to incorrect judgments. Additionally, the lack of debriefing at the end of the experiment to clarify the deception could have caused lingering psychological effects in the participants.

Answer 3

Unless you count making the participants feel traumatized by the fact that they didn't get correct length of the lines, I think it's ethical. Of course de-briefing statement has to be given if you intend to replicate the design.

Answer 4

There are a number of ethical concerns in Asch's study.

Firstly, the participants were deceived, and not made aware of the true nature of the study until the debriefing.

Secondly, the participants did not give informed consent (impossible given the deception) although they were provided a right to withdraw following the debrief.

Finally, there was a small amount of harm to the participants. Most participants reported feeling stressed, although this wasn't an exceptional amount.

Overall, Asch's study has some ethical issues, but not enough to warrant much criticism.