condition, one confederate is identified as a graduate student in perception research. During both
conditions, the confederates all give the same wrong answers to the size-comparison questions. Professor
Reiman tracks how many times participants conform to the incorrect answers. For this experiment,
identify:
■ the independent variable
■ the dependent variable
■ the operational definition of the dependent variable
■ one confounding variable controlled for by this research design
■ the principal difference between Professor Reiman’s study and Asch’s original conformity research
■ your prediction about the level of conformity in the first condition
■ your prediction about the level of conformity in the second conditionAfter reading the question, stop and think about what it is asking you. You are allowed to make notes on
the question sheet, and many students find making a simple outline at this point and organizing their
thoughts helpful. All free-response questions imply a certain organization for your answer. Use this
implied organization, do not ignore it. You might be tempted to create a unique organization for your
answer. However, your reader is not giving you points based on organization, so the time you spend
planning this unique organization is wasted. In addition, if you answer a question out of order, you
increase the chances the reader might misunderstand what you are trying to say. In this case, the format of
the question indicates that you organize your essay based on the seven bulleted elements. Do NOT write
your answer as an outline (this is specifically prohibited in the instructions in the test booklet), but you
SHOULD organize your answer in the same order as the elements in the question. Writing one paragraph
per bullet in the implied order will help AP readers score your response (and you want to help your
reader!).
Also, notice that this question does not ask you to review the Asch study in detail. Knowing the basic
findings of Asch’s conformity study will help you with the last two bullets, but a detailed description of
Asch’s study does not directly answer this question. Always do what is asked of you in the free-response
question: adding information that the question does not ask for (even if it is accurate information) will not
help your score.
In addition, remember not to spend your precious time writing an introduction or conclusion. Grading
rubrics (as you will see) are focused on measuring your psychological knowledge, not general writing
skills like introductions, conclusions, writing mechanics, and so on. Answer the elements of the question
clearly and in order rather than spending time with introductions, conclusions, or creative ways to
organize your response.
At this point, you may want to write YOUR response to this free-response question before looking at
the scoring rubric provided below. After you write your response, you can use the scoring rubric to score
your answer.
RUBRIC FOR SAMPLE QUESTION
This is a 7-point question.
POINT 1
Independent variable