Introduction
Recently, while reading about Asch’s original experiment on conformity, I became interested in the question of how this is currently the case. Watching and analyzing various videos, articles, scientific papers, and reviews, one experiment was found, which was documented and published online in 2019. In this scientific work, the authors tried to understand how a group of people, pre-placed in different conditions (the number of agents and computers), can perform social and analytical tasks (Hertz et al., 2019). The essence of the social task was that 155 students were divided into five groups, where they had to answer the question of what emotion the picture shown on the computer screen shows.
Discussion
It is logical to assume that this choice of research concept in sociology is an experiment. Considering the chosen article’s peculiarities, the authors made an adequate and the only correct research method. By itself, the method of experimentation from sociology involves a pre-modeled environment and task, as well as people who will be placed in these conditions. In this case, the people selected for this method must be chosen in various ways, such as randomization. The main goal of an experiment in a social environment is to manipulate the choice or response of the participant in the experiment, depending on the conditions of the task.
Returning to the selected study, the authors made an intelligent choice to fulfill the main task, which was as follows: “To what extent mixed groups of humans and computers are capable of inducing a social conformity effect?” (Hertz et al., 2019, p. 244). In this case, the experiment conducted by the article’s authors needed to comply with all ethical standards and the main stages.
Conclusion
The main reason for choosing the experiment for the authors was that random assignment assures the direction of causality. Moreover, a large number of participants made it possible to draw correct and adequate conclusions that would not raise questions regarding the results’ reliability.
Reference
Hertz, N., Shaw, T., de Visser, E. J., & Wiese, E. (2019). Mixing it up: How mixed groups of humans and machines modulate conformity. Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 13(4), 242–257.