222 Stephanie Amedeo Marquez
rather than elucidating Asch’s findings and his explanation of them as
conclusive.
Steuer and Ham (2008) described multiple errors in texts they
examined and attributed such errors to textbook authors use of
“deductive” rather than “inductive referencing”. They suggest discipline-
wide efforts to assess, inform, and revise textbooks scholarly quality.
Promoting improvements based in critical social psychology will enhance
the discipline of psychology. The findings regarding Asch in this chapter
suggest inclusion of cultural as well as global alternative explanations.
In examining the portrayals, this chapter finds that the presentations,
and handling of, culture as a social influence within 20 introductory
psychology texts (cf. Mills, 1959; Berger & Luckmann, 1966) to be
lacking in insight regarding the interconnectedness of the social reality that
‘conformity’ is more than solely an individual’s perception of a social
group situation, instead it is an interaction which results in a social
construction. Therefore, any text which implies a focus on simply
individualistic explanations, without consideration of the influence of
collectivity, does not suffice to convey the actuality of a social
psychological concept such as conformity. As Gough et al. (2013) pointed
out in their examination of critical social psychology, rethinking social
influence requires exactly the issue pointed out by Mills (1959). Insights
into social psychology are lacking and limited if presented as a simplistic
view of how “individuals are constituted by society” (Gough et al., 2013,
p. 109).
APPENDIX A
Table 1. Classic Social Psychological Studies- Asch’s (1955) conformity (line-judgment) studies: “Opinions and
social pressure.” - Zimbardo’s (1972) Stanford prison experiment: “Psychology of
imprisonment.”