Explanations For Obediance Flashcards
1
Q
Situational explanations
A
- agentic state and legitimacy of authority
- the situation your in leads you to obey
2
Q
Dispositional
A
- authoritarian personality
- Internal reasons e.g. personality and traits that lead you to obey
3
Q
Agentic State
A
- when the individual gives up their free will and no longer see themselves as acting independently but merely as an agent implementing someone else’s decisions
- we surrender our conscience and become an instrument for authority
- They will experience a moral strain - feeling uncomfortable as a consequence of going against their own conscience
- they then employ psychological defence mechanisms
- p’s in Milgrams experiment showed this - agents of the experimenters
4
Q
Legitimacy of authority
A
- the hierarchical nature’s of society seem to sanction and legitimise key authority figures, this makes us readily identify their power and obey
- from early childhood we are socialised by our parents at home and teachers at school into obeying those who have authority over us
- we obey people with legitimate authority because we trust them or because they have the power to punish us
- in Milgram’s variations this was seen - Location dropped to 48%, Loss of uniform dropped to 20%
5
Q
Authoritarian personality
A
- Might is right - different ideologies from out-group members can harm society. Perceptions of threat leads to aggression against out-groups. Adorno saw these individuals as having insecurities that lead them to be hostile to non-conventional people and having a belief in the need for power and toughness that leads them to be highly obedient to authority figures
- Upbringing - if a person is raised by dogmatic and distant parents, who punished constantly for minor reasons and have rigid and absolute ideologies, they learn from early childhood to obey the people who have more power over them, they will continue this obedient attitude as an adult
- Personality traits - possess these traits : Rigid beliefs in conventional values, general hostility towards other groups, intolerance of ambiguity, respect and submissive attitude towards authority figures
- F-scale - Adorno’s scale indicating fascist traits. There are 30 questions measuring 9 dimensions of personality. The higher the F-scale the more likely the person is to have an authoritarian personality
6
Q
Eval for situational
A
- Research to support - Milgram or Asch
- Alternative explanations - dispositional - cannot fully explain obedience
- Leads to obedience alibi
- practical obedience - prevention - lead to understanding of blind obedience dangers - education
7
Q
Eval for dispositional
A
- Research - Elms and Milgram found that p’s who scored higher on the f-scale gave higher levels of shock when ordered to do so
- Alternative explanations - situational - personality cannot be the only factor
- Cause and effect - Middendorp and Meloen found less educated people are consistently more authoritarian and more obedient
- Practical applications - able to identify those with an authoritarian personality - prevent - gov stopping extremism