1.1 Social content Flashcards
What is obedience?
Obedience is a form of social influence where the behaviour of an individual is influenced by a real or imagined pressure from another, compliance to the real or imagined demands of an authority figure.
Obedience - yielding to these demands.
Dissent - rejecting the demands.
What is a confederate?
Someone who helps someone else to do something.
What is social influence?
When an individual’s behaviour, attitudes and emotions are affected by those of another.
What. is socialisation?
The process by which we learn the rules and norms of society through socialising agents, such as teachers and parents.
What is autonomy?
Acting on one’s own free will.
In the autonomous state, human acts according to their own free will.
What is agency?
When one acts as an agent for another.
When given instructions by an authority figure the human switches to an agent state of mind, where they see themselves as acting as an agent for the authority figure.
What is moral strain?
Experiencing anxiety, usually because you are asked to do something that goes against your moral judgement.
Milgram observed many participants in his obedience study experience moral strain when ordered to harm another person.
Moral strain occurs when people are asked to do something they would not choose to do themselves, and they feel is immoral or unjust. This moral strain results in an individual feeling very uncomfortable in the situation and, in extreme circumstances, they show anxiety and distress. This anxiety is felt as the individual contemplates dissent and considers behaving in a way that contradicts what they have been socialised to do.
The shift into an agent state of mind relieves moral strain as the individual displaces the responsibility of the situation onto. the authority figure, thereby absolving them of the consequences of their actions. This is not to say that displacement of responsibility is the only way to relieve moral detrain. In fact, dissent to authority can also produce relief one an individual has removed themselves from the situation.
Arendt (1963) is a small evaluation point, did he support nature or nurture when discussing obedience?
Arendt (1963) describes obedience as an ingrained behaviour established through the process of socialisation. This behaviour manifests as we are exposed to authority figures under certain environmental conditions conductive to compliance, such s closeness and status of the authority figure.
What did Hofling et al do?
Hofling et al. (1966) staged a study in a hospital setting. A stooge doctor telephones a nurse working on a ward late at night, asking her to administer twice the daily dose of a drug to the patient. Against hospital policy, the stooge doctor informed the. nurse that she would sign the prescription later. A total of 21 out of 22 nurses followed the doctors orders and attempted to give the medication to the patient. Several of the nurses justified their behaviour as being as result of the hierarchy of authority at the hospital. This supports agency. theory because the majority of nurses displaced their personal responsibility
Evaluate agency theory.
Supporting
- Hofling et al, 21/22 nurses obeyed
- Milgram, 65% Pps obeyed
Conflicting
- French and Raven (1959) five bases of power
Other theories
- individual differences, (agency theory does not explain why some people obey and some people do not), personality type, gender, situation.
Usefulness
- used to explain real life events, holocaust, the Vietnam war, (claimed “just following orders”)
Testability
- Very difficult to measure, internal mental process that cannot be directly measured, only inferred from behaviour
(see page 19 in the thick blue text book for a longer detailed evaluation expanding these points)
What did French and Raven discover?
French and Raven (1959)
Identified five bases of power which are said to motivate and influence behaviour:
- Legitimate power
- Reword power
- Referent power
- Expert power
- Coercive power
These factors are said to provide a better explanation. of obedience, and certainly provide a better explanation for Milgram’s findings from his experiments.
Who proposed social impact theory?
Bibb Latané (1981)
What does social impact theory state?
Bibb Latané (1981) proposed a theory of social influence that can be used to explain why people are obedient.
Latané referred to targets and sources of social influence. The target referred to the person being impacted on and the source being the influencer. He developed a formulation of different principles that result in a more or less social influence being exerted on the target.
Although these principles refer to social influence in general (conformity, bystander behaviour etc.) they can be used to explain obedience too.
Explain the 3 principle factor that affect social influence as described by Bibb Latané (1981), (social impact theory)
Strength determined by: - status - authority - age of the source. (The perceived power/authority of the source)
Immediacy determined by:
- proximity
- distance
- presence of buffers as barriers to distance
between source and target.
- How soon the task is asked to be achieved
(The closeness of the source and the target. in. terms of space, but also time)
Number determined by: - no. targets - no. sources in the social situation. (How many sources are present during the interaction, which determines the level of social impact)
In terms obedience, this suggests that authority figures who are perceived to be legitimate, who are immediate o the individual and who are greater number, will be more likely to ensure obedience.
What is the psychosocial law when discussing social impact theory?
What is a study that proves of this?
One source has a great impact, adding another source improves the impact, but adding more and more sources does not have anymore of an overall effect on the targets.
Berkowitz, Bickman and Milgram (1969) conducted a study:
- at City University of New York.
- Reduction in social impact.
- 1-15 confederates on the street craned their necks to look at Milgram video taping them on the 6th floor.
- Passers by also craned their neck, imitating them.
Found: although increasing the number of confederates craning their neck did increase the number of passers-by imitating their actions, the number of passers-by grew smaller relative to the size of the confederate group.
The effect levelled off.
Who demonstrated the divisional effect of social impact?
What did they find?
Latané and Darley (1970)
They found that a lone person was more likely to help someone in need compared to a group of people; there was a diffusion of responsibility similar to a divisional effect.
In terms of obedience, it would suggest that an authority figure would have a diminished capacity to influence someone if that someone had an ally or group of allies.
How did one of Milgram’s study demonstrate the divisional effect of social impact?
In a variation study by Milgram, where two. peers. rebel against the instructions of an authority figure asking them to administer harmful electric shocks to a victim, the presence of peers lowered obedience to 10%
This demonstrates the divisional effect of one source on many targets.
What is the divisional effect of social impact?
The higher number of targets there are, the less of an impact the source has.
Evaluate social impact theory.
Supporting
- Latané
- Milgram
Conflicting
?
Other theories
- individual differences, (SIT ignores these), some of us are more resistant to social impact and some more. passive.
- considered to be a static rather than a dynamic theory because it does not take into account. how the target and source interact with one another.
Usefulness
- Useful as a general formulation and can predict behaviour under certain conditions
- Limited in type official situation it can explain, (cannot predict equal no. sources and number)
- Cannot calculate strength of source, subjective
Testibility
- Theory is quantifiable in that the principles can be observed in everyday behaviour. Research into conformity, obedience, and bystander behaviour have all demonstrated the impact of strength, immediacy and number on observable human response in social situations.
(see page 21 in the thick blue text book)
What does androcentric mean?
Focused on men.
What was the aim of Milgram’s (1963) original study?
To investigate whether ordinary people would follow orders and give an innocent person a potentially harmful electric shock.
What was Milgram’s (1963) sample?
- 40
- Volunteer
- All male
- 20-50 years
- jobs, unskilled-skilled
- £4 incentive for participating
What was the procedure of Milgram’s (1963) study?
At the beginning of the experiment, they were introduced to another participant, who was a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram).
They drew straws to determine their roles – learner or teacher – although this was fixed and the confederate was always the learner. There was also an “experimenter” dressed in a gray lab coat, played by an actor (not Milgram).
Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used - one for the learner (with an electric chair) and another for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator.
Milgram obedience Mr Wallace
The “learner” (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair with electrodes. After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the “teacher” tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices.
The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe shock).
milgram obedience IV variations
The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose), and for each of these, the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock, the experimenter was to give a series of orders/prods to ensure they continued.
There were four prods and if one was not obeyed, then the experimenter (Mr. Williams) read out the next prod, and so on.
What were the 4 prods used in Milgram’s (1963) study?
Prod 1: Please continue.
Prod 2: The experiment requires you to continue.
Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.
Prod 4: You have no other choice but to continue.
How did Milgram ensure of experimental realism in his (1963) study?
To convince the teacher that the shocks were real, they were given a 45-volt sample shock.
What were the results of Milgram’s (1963) study?
65% - 450v (fully obedient)
100% - 300v
What were the conclusions from Milgram’s (1963) study?
Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.
