Explanations for Obedience Flashcards
What was the procedures Adorno et Al’s ?
-1950, investigated causes of obedient personality in a study of more than 2000 middle class and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. They developed several scales, one of them being “potential for fascism scale” which is still used to measure authoritarian personality.
What were the findings of Adorno et Al?
- Found that people with authoritarian leanings (those who scored high on the F-scale and other measures) identified with “strong” people and were generally disapproving of the “weak”. They were very conscious of their own and others status, showing excessive respect, deference and servility to those of higher status.
- Authoritarian people had cognitive style where there was no “fuzziness” between categories of people, with fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups
What were the authoritarian characteristics?
- Extreme respect for authority and submissiveness to it.
- Show a contempt for people they perceive as having inferior social status.
- Highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race and gender.
- View society as “going to the dogs” and therefore believe we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values like love of country, religion and family.
- Inflexible in outlook, either everything is right or wrong and are uncomfortable with the uncertainty.
What is the origin of the authoritarian personality?
- This type of personality formed in childhood as result of harsh parenting.
- Expectations of absolute loyalty, severe criticism of perceived failings.
- These experiences create resentment and hostility in child but the child cannot express these feelings directly against their parents because of well-founded fear of reprisals. So these fears are displaced onto others who are perceived to be weaker, which is known as scapegoating.
What is psychodynamic explanation?
-The origin of authoritarian personality explains a central trait of obedience to higher authority, which is dislike to people considered to be socially inferior or who belong to other social groups.
What is the evaluation of dispositional explanation?
-Milgram and assistant Elms conducted interviews with small sample of fully obedient ppt ,who scored highly on F-Scale, believing there might be link between obedience and authoritarian personality. This makes it impossible to draw conclusion that authoritarian personality caused obedience on basis of his result. “Third factor” may be involved where obedience + auth. person. are associated with lower level of education and not directly linked with each other.
What are the differences between authoritarian and obedient?
-Elms and Milgram asked ppt about their upbringing. Many of fully obedient ppt reported having good relationships with their parents rather than having grown up in a overly strict environment associated with authoritarian personality.
What is social support?
-The presence of people who resist pressures to conform or obey, helping others to do the same. These people act as models to show others resistance to social influence is possible.
What are the impacts of social support on conformity?
- Social support can help people to resist conformity. Pressure to conform can be reduced if other people are not conforming. Asch discovered the person not conforming doesn’t have to give the right answer, but simply the fact that someone else is not following the majority appears to enable a person to be free to follow their own conscience.
- However, Asch’s research also showed that if the “non-conforming” person starts to conform, so does the naïve participant. Effect of dissent not long lasting.
What are the impacts of social support on obedience?
-Can help to resist obedience. Pressure to obey can be reduced if there is another person who is seen to disobey. In one of Milgram’s variations, rate of obedience dropped from 65% to 10% when genuine participant was joined by disobedient confederate. Participant may not follow disobedient person’s behaviour but the point is the other person’s disobedience acts as a “model” for participant to copy freeing him to act from his own conscience.
What is locus of control?
-Julian Rotter proposed this concept concerning with internal control versus external control. Internals believe that thing that happen them are largely controlled by themselves. E.g. is you do well in an exam, it’s because you worked hard, vice versa. Externals have a tendency to believe that things happen outside their control. E.g. if they did well in an exam they might say it was because they used an excellent textbook, vice versa.
What is the continuum of LOC?
-People differ in ways to express success and failure, it isn’t a simple matter of being internal or external. There’s a continuum with high internal LOC at one and and high external LOC at the other end of the continuum, with low internal and low external lying in between. People can fall anywhere on the continuum.
What is the resistance of social influence on LOC?
-People who have internal LOC are more likely to resist pressures or conform or obey. This is very obvious as if a person takes personal responsibility for their actions and experiences they are more likely to base their decisions on their own beliefs and thus resisting pressures from others.
What are the evaluations of LOC?
- Research evidence supports link between LOC and resistance to obedience. Holland repeated Milgram’s baseline study and measured whether ppt were internal or external. 37% of internals didn’t continue to highest shock level, whereas 23% of externals didn’t continue. Shows internals showed greater resistance to authority.
- However not all research supports link between LOC and resistance. Tenge et al analysed data from American obedience studies over a 40 year period. Data (1960 to 2002) showed people have become more resistant to obedience but also more external. If resistance were linked to internal LOC, we would expect people to become more internal.
What did Milgram find between gender and obedience?
-Milgram carried out research using females and found 65% obedience level, same as original study using males.
