1.3 Explanations for obedience

Question 1

What is obedience?

Answer 1

Type of social influence involving complying w demands of an authority figure

• Usually +ve - abiding laws etc.
• Can be -ve - many Germans followed orders leading to mass killing of Jews in WWII

Question 2

What research has been completed on obedience?

Answer 2

Milgram’s behavioural study of obedience

Question 3

What were Milgram’s aims?

Answer 3

• To test the ‘Germans are different’ hyp - Hitler wouldn’t have been able to kill so many Jews w/o obedient & unquestioning German pop
• To see if indivs would obey the orders of an authority figure that went against one’s moral code

Question 4

What was Milgram’s procedure?

Answer 4

• 40 American male respondents to newspaper ad selected for ‘study of memory and learning’ @ Yale Uni
• Pps met by experimenter in lab coat, introduced to harmless 50-y/o Mr Wallace
• Pps allocated as teacher, Mr W as learner
• Pps ordered to read out paired-associate words to Mr W - if he got it wrong, Pp had to give shock - shocks increased by 15V w every wrong answer
• Pre-recorded speech of Mr W showed he was distressed - 150V = learner asks to leave - 300V = refuses to answer - 330V = no sound
• If the Pp was reluctant, they were told ‘the experiment requires you continue’ and assured that shocks did no lasting damage

Question 5

What were the results of Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 5

• Obedience measured as % of Pps who went to max 450V - 65% obeyed - 100% went to 300V
• Many Pps showed distress e.g. sweating, digging nails into skin, giggling nervously - 3 Pps had uncontrollable seizures - some showed no distress

Question 6

What did Milgram conclude?

Answer 6

• ‘Germans are different’ hyp = false
• People obey those who they see as authority figures
• We obey orders against moral code in presence of auth figure

Question 7

What is the Milgram paradigm?

Answer 7

Milgram established paradigm for studying obedience

Question 8

What further research has been done on obedience?

Answer 8

Hofling et al performed exp where 22 nurses individually received phone calls from unknown ‘Dr Smith’ to give patient ‘Mr Jones’ 20mg prescription of unknown drug - label stated max dose was 10mg

21/22 obeyed w/o hesitation - in control group 21/22 said they would not have obeyed in situation

Shows people blindly obey auth figures

Question 9

What reduces support for Milgram’s study of obedience?

Answer 9

• Ethical issues - Milgram’s study ethically questionable - M deceived Pps as they believed they were participating in study of how punishment affects learning - also deceived by thinking role-allocation was random (it was rigged) - Pps not protected from harm - many showed signs or real distress e.g. biting nails - may have felt guilt after exp
• Lacks ecological validity - M conduced in lab setting - different to real-life situations of obedience - giving elec shocks lacks mundane realism - cannot generalise findings and conclude people would obey less severe instructions to same degree - yet M counters this claim - argues lab can reflect real-life obedience - Hofling et al found 21/22 nurses obeyed orders from unknown doctor over the phone in real hospital setting - supports M’s claim
• Lacks population validity - biased sample of 40 male American volunteers - androcentric and ethnocentric - cannot be generalised to other cultures or females as cannot conclude that everyone would react same way - creates beta bias in gender and culture as research may have ignored/minimised differences between genders and cultures so lacks validity
• Not universal - Kilman & Mann replicated M’s original study in Australia - found only 16% of Pps shocked learner at max voltage - Mantell showed it was 85% when conducted in Germany - cross-cultural comparison shows diff societies follow diff hierarchies and children may be socialised to be obedient differently

Question 10

What are the situational and dispositional factors that affect obedience?

Answer 10

Situational:

• Proximity
• Location
• Uniform

Dispositional:

• Authoritarian personality

Question 11

What is proximity and how can it affect obedience?

Answer 11

Proximity involves how aware indivs are of the consequences of their actions in obeying auth figures - when consequences are more visible obed is lower

In a variation, Milgram found when T & L were in same room, obed dropped from 65% to 40% - when T had to force L’s hand onto shock plate, obed dropped from 65% to 30%

Question 12

What is location and how can it affect obedience?

Answer 12

Locations that add to the legitimacy of an auth figure increase obed - obed is greatest in institutionalised settings

Milgram conducted variation of original study in a run-down office block in Bridgeport, Connecticut - obed dropped from 65% to 47.5%

Question 13

What is uniform and how can it affect obedience?

Answer 13

Wearing uniforms appropriate to an auth figure adds to their legitimacy and therefore increases obed

Milgram conducted variation where experimenter was called away and replaced by another ‘Pp’ (confed) in ordinary clothes who came up with the idea of increasing the voltage every time the leaner made a mistake - obed dropped from 65% to 20%

Question 14

What is the authoritarian personality and how can it affect obedience?

Answer 14

The authoritarian personality explains right-wing, conservative views - characterised by belief in absolute obed, submission to auth and dominance of minorities - associated w higher obed by research - Adorno et al developed a questionnaire called the F-scale to measure levels of authoritarian personality

Milgram found that Pps in his study who were the most obedient were signif more auth on F-scale than disobed Pps

Question 15

What makes people with the authoritarian personality more obedient according to Adorno?

Answer 15

They feel insecure towards unconventional people so are obedient to authority figures who are seen as enforcing convention

Question 16

What support is there for how situational variables affect authority?

Answer 16

• All of Milgram’s situational variable research - use for AO1 but talk about why it is useful to link to AO3
• Other research supports uniform - Bickman conducted field exp of influence of uniform in NYC - used 3 confeds, one dressed in jacket and tie, one in milkman’s outfit, one in security guard outfit - confeds stood in street and asked passers-by to perform tasks like picking up litter - people twice as likely to obey confed dressed as security guard than one dressed in jacket and tie - supports M’s conclusion that uniform conveys authority of wearer

Question 17

What reduces support for how situational variables affect authority?

Answer 17

• Other factors important - research suggests other factors like culture are important - Kilman & Mann replicated M’s original study in Australia - found only 16% of Pps shocked learner at max voltage - Mantell showed it was 85% when conducted in Germany - cross-cultural comparison shows diff societies follow diff hierarchies and children may be socialised to be obedient differently

Question 18

What are the explanations for obedience?

Answer 18

• The agentic state
• Legitimacy of authority
• Dehumanisation

Question 19

What is the agentic state and the agentic shift, and how does it explain obedience?

Answer 19

The agentic state occurs when an indiv gives up some of their free will due to obeying auth figure - they see themselves as an agent of their superior - this shift from autonomy to ‘agency’ is the ‘agentic shift’

This causes de-individuation of the indiv as they don’t see themselves as responsible - therefore they may do things that break their moral code

Question 20

What is legitimacy of authority and how can it explain obedience?

Answer 20

From an early age, ppl experience examples of auth hierarchies e.g. parent-child, teacher-student - teaches ppl who should be obeyed

If an auth figure is legitimate (e.g. teacher in a classroom ordering a student), people more likely to obey

Question 21

What is dehumanisation and how can it explain obedience?

Answer 21

Where ppl made lesser in some way so they seem deserving of lesser treatment e.g. Jews portrayed by rats as Nazis

This makes it easier for ppl to obey orders at expense of dehumanised indiv as there is less moral strain felt when punishing

Question 22

What support is there for explanations for obedience?

Answer 22

• Support for agentic state - M conducted a ‘remote authority’ variation of his procedure - confed researcher gave orders over a phone link - in this variation, overall obed dropped from 65% to 20.5% - suggests indivs did not obey as they were in the autonomous state - in the original procedure they were in the agentic state - provides support for the AS
• Leg of auth complements cultural differences in obedience - Kilham & Mann repl M study in Aus - 16% obedience - Mantell repl M study in Germany - 85% - shows authority more likely to be accepted as legit in some cultures - reflects diff ways children raised to view authority in diff cultures

Question 23

What reduces support for explanations for obedience?

Answer 23

• Agentic shift doesn’t explain many research findings - can’t explain why Pps do not obey - cannot explain Hofling et al’s study - agentic shift explanation predicts, as nurses handed over responsibility to doctor, should have shown similar anxiety levels to M’s Pps as they understood their role in destructive process - was not the case - agentic shift can only explain some situations of obedience
• Nazis cannot be explained by agentic shift - Mandel described incident involving German Reserve Police Battalion 101 where men obeyed orders to shoot civilians in small town in Poland - they did this despite not having direct orders to do so - were told they could be assigned to other duties if they preferred - contradicts agentic shift as even when acting autonomously soldiers clearly did not feel responsible

Question 24

What support is there for the dispositional explanation for obedience?

Answer 24

• Support for authoritarian pers - Milgram & Elms conducted post-exp intviews w fully obedient Pps in M’s original study to see if there was link between high obed levels and auth pers - found obed Pps scored higher on F-scale compared to disobed Pps - also obed Pps were less close to fathers during childhood and admired experimenter in M’s study - opposite for disobed Pps - concluded obed Pps showed auth pers characteristics

Question 25

What reduces support for the dispositional explanation for obedience?

Answer 25

• Individual differences - Middendorp & Meleon found less-educated ppl more likely than well-educated ppl to display auth pers characteristics - if this is correct, then it is possible that other factors apart from auth pers lead to obedience e.g. level of education
• Methodological problems w auth pers trait measures - risk of respondents suffering from social desirability when doing F-scale - provide socially acceptable answers - therefore Pps may appear authoritarian bc they believe answers are socially correct so are incorrectly classified (and vice versa) - reduces int validity of Qnaire RM used to determine auth pers
• Cannot explain all obedient behav - in pre-war Germany, millions of indivs displayed obedient, racist and anti-Sem behav - but their personalities must have differed in various ways - unlikely they ALL had auth pers - social identity better explanation - maj of German pop identified w anti-Sem Nazi state so scapegoated Jewish pop