Describe and evaluate one study of social influence.

One study of social influence is Asch's line study. Asch conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform. A lab experiment was conducted to study conformity whereby fifty male students participated in a 'vision test'. Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A,B,C) was most like the target line. On average about 32% of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials. Over the twelve critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of the participants never conformed.
An issue with Asch's research is that the sample was biased. This is because it was only college students who were men. This means that it has low population validity, which may not be able to be generalised to women in the population. Therefore, this means that women may not conform in a similar way as it may be different for men and women. Another issue is that ethical guidelines may have been broken when the study was conducted. This is because participants were deceived as confederates were used. Participants were also told that the true aim of the study was a "vision test". This means that there was no informed consent. Therefore, ethical issues arise, however, participants were ultimately deceived to reduce demand characteristics.